EU seeks to strengthen rearmament strategy following new NATO spending agreement

For most of the European leaders who were summoned to Brussels on Thursday for the June European Council meeting, it was a short trip. Many were traveling directly from The Hague, the nearby Dutch city where NATO had just agreed to the largest increase in defense spending in its history.

That accord was reached on Wednesday in one of NATO’s most tense summits ever, and will raise military spending from its current target of 2% of national GDP to 5% over the next 10 years. With this agreement, the 27 EU member countries — 23 of which are also part of NATO — hope to boost and coordinate their own efforts in security and defense, areas to which the bloc has turned unprecedented focus amid global conflicts, particularly the war in Ukraine.

Expectations are high. So high, in fact, that conclusions from the last meeting of European heads of state and government, under the rotating presidency of Poland, contain constant references to the Hague summit as a driver of progress among EU countries as well. “The European Council stresses the need to continue to substantially increase expenditure on Europe’s defense and security, and invest better together,” said the statement on Thursday’s meeting in the Belgian capital.

That sense of urgency was also made clear by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, in a letter to the leaders sent on the eve of the summit. “We must prepare ourselves, and be prepared, to protect our citizens, our interests and our Union in all possible scenarios,” the two officials wrote to the 27 member nations.

But U.S. President Donald Trump’s unexpected threat to Spain, an EU member state, for having questioned the 5% imposed by Washington, looking to negotiate a more flexible route, raises a big question mark ahead of the next EU meeting. Before returning to the White House from the Hague, Trump announced that there would be trade reprisals against Spain.

“They’re the only country that won’t pay the full,” Trump said. “They’re going to pay, they’ll pay more money this way,” he promised, visibly irritated. Although he did not explicitly mention ‘tariffs,’ his threat is concerning, as it comes just as Trump’s deadline set for imposing tariffs on the entire European bloc rapidly approaches.

That date is July 9, and so far there is no news of progress in the last-minute negotiations being carried out by Brussels to find a solution. Trump can impose specific tariffs on Spain (that is, on products Spain exports to the United States), but Spain must respond through the EU, since trade policy is the exclusive competence of the European Commission and trade agreements in Europe are made not by individual countries, but by the entire bloc.

Brussels has declined to enter into the standoff for the time being, citing that it does not respond to “comments or threats.” However, it did want to reiterate that the bloc is “fully and deeply engaged in negotiations” from which it hopes to achieve a “mutually beneficial” solution. In the case of the contrary, added a spokesperson, all tools and options are still on the table.

But with some of the witnesses to the open standoff between Trump and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez now seated around another table, it’s hard for the issue not to come up in Brussels one way or another. This is also due to the unease that some countries had expressed — more or less openly — over Spain’s defiance on military spending. The country will now try to meet its military spending commitments with 2.1% of its GDP — which Spain considers sufficient — instead of the 3.5% target the rest of the allies have committed to through 2035.

Speaking of war, rearmament and threats of various natures — from the military danger posed by Russia and its imperialist appetite that extends past Ukraine to cyberattacks and other aggressions — are no longer taboo in Europe. “The era of the peace dividend is long gone,” warned Von der Leyen when she announced SAFE, a $176 billion loan instrument to support joint defense equipment purchases by member states, in mid-March.

At the same time, she proposed a national escape clause, which would allow countries to deviate from fiscal paths to spend up to 1.5% more of their GDP on defense without being penalized under European regulations. Up to 16 member states have shown interest in making use of the escape clause.

At least for the moment, Spain is not among them, because it does not consider it necessary to arrive at the 2% defense spending to which it has committed. And countries like Denmark, historically loathe to increase spending out of negotiation, as it will have to starting in July with the multiannual EU budget, have abandoned frugality in light of new defense needs.

Conscious that despite the claims of Trump — who said he was “100%” with the allies in The Hague — the United States’s support in terms of defense is more fragile than ever, the EU wants to accelerate other instruments and avenues of defense financing. The bloc is also forging alliances with non-EU partners. The latest was with Canada, another NATO member that was questioned by Trump on Monday. Its prime minister, Mark Carney, stopped in Brussels on his way to The Hague to seal a security and defense agreement that will allow Canadian companies to apply for the SAFE credit program. In recent weeks, the EU has signed defense agreements with Australia and the United Kingdom, another NATO partner.

Besides military spending, Ukraine was another key issue at the NATO summit, though it was far from the central topic of discussion it has been at previous meetings.

In The Hague, European leaders wanted to make clear to their partner that it continues to be a priority — and that the survival of Ukraine, and security guarantees for Kyiv, are also fundamental to the security of the Old Continent, despite Washington’s resistance to approve new military support for Kyiv.

All NATO member countries, including the United States, are “totally committed” to supporting Ukraine in the fight to defeat the Russian invasion, said Secretary General Mark Rutte, in an interview with Reuters after the summit.

In a reversal of fortune after Trump snubbed him a week ago at the G-7 summit in Canada, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy held a bilateral meeting on Wednesday with the U.S. president, who was unusually complimentary towards him. After the 50-minute meeting, the Republican — in a move that seemed unthinkable when he publicly rebuked Zelenskiy in the Oval Office in February — also appeared open to providing weapons to the country under attack from Russia, following the escalation of Moscow’s offensive.

That approval was one of the Ukrainian leader’s main objectives in attending the Atlantic summit. The other was to get Trump to agree to tougher sanctions on Russia.

Until now, Trump had given no signs of wishing to provide Kyiv with arms. In fact, during the period of his worst falling-outs with Zelenskiy in February, he cancelled shipments of equipment already approved by the previous U.S. Congress and Democratic president Joe Biden. At the Wednesday meeting, Trump even made mention of the Patriot missiles, which Ukraine considers essential for resisting Russian advances. He said that the missiles or their entire air defense systems — it was unclear to which Trump was referring — are “very hard to get” but that “we’re going to see if we can make some available.”

The meeting was the capstone of the last 48 hours for the Ukrainian president, who received strong support from European leaders. Even before his arrival, Rutte had announced that European allies — who fear a potential Russian attack on one of their members within the next 10 years — have nearly doubled their military aid pledges to Kyiv: from the €20 billion ($23 billion) committed in the first three months to €35 billion ($41 billion).

Although in the end, Zelenskiy did not plan to attend Brussels personally on Thursday, the future of Ukraine is one of the highest priorities for the European agenda. In contrast to the passing mention of a single sentence in the Hague statement, the EU agenda devotes almost a quarter of its text to expressing “steadfast” European support against the Russian offensive.

The EU advocates for continuing to put pressure on Moscow until it shows “genuine political will to end its illegal and unprovoked war of aggression,” agree to a ceasefire and begin productive negotiations, according to statements from a spokesperson. It promised to double down on pressure through more sanctions, although it appears unlikely that they will succeed in approving the much-publicized 18th sanctions package at this latest summit.

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