Germany owes NATO over £150bn since Putin’s first invasion

Part Two : NATO 2022 data shows why the EU should be very grateful to Brexit Britain

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

Exclusive Facts4EU report puts the big EU countries to the sword over defence spending

On Thursday we published Part One of our report into the latest NATO figures for defence spending. This showed Brexit Britain as the most dominant spender on defence in Europe last year (2022).

In Part Two today we look at defence spending since Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and ask:

“Just how much do EU countries like Germany owe,
for what they have failed to spend on defence?”

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Military expenditure by EU countries 2015-2022, compared with the UK, in £'s billions

Compared to what they should have spent based on the NATO minimum of 2% of GDP

  • UK : £24.1
  • Greece : £10.5
  • Poland : £4.6
  • Estonia : £0.2
  • Latvia : -£0.3
  • Lithuania : -£0.4
  • Croatia : -£0.9
  • Bulgaria : -£1.2
  • Slovenia : -£3.0
  • Slovakia : -£3.1
  • Romania : -£3.0
  • Luxembourg : -£6.5
  • Hungary : -£6.2
  • Portugal : -£8.7
  • Czechia : -£11.1
  • Denmark : -£15.8
  • France : -£25.3
  • Belgium : -£32.6
  • Netherlands : -£37.1
  • Italy : -£83.4
  • Spain : -£86.9
  • Germany : -£152.2

TOTAL EU UNDERSPEND : £478bn

[Source: NATO defence expenditure data released 21 Mar 2023. Dollars converted into pounds at £1=$1.223, per Bloomberg 25 Mar 2023.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 - click to enlarge

Since the 2014 NATO Summit the UK has been the only reliable European military power

In September 2014 at the Summit held in Wales, the NATO leaders agreed to a declaration in response to Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea – part of the sovereign territory of Ukraine.

At that important Summit it was agreed that all NATO member countries should spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defence and that 20% of the defence expenditure should be on equipment.

The United Kingdom is the only country in Europe to have met both targets consistently since then.

The UK’s Rejoiners and ‘Globalists’ have received over £3m in foreign funding

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Germany has had eight years to hit the NATO target – what has it done?

In the eight years from 2015-2022 Germany has underspent on defence by $186.1bn, (approx £152.2bn GBP), according to the NATO figures analysed by Brexit Facts4EU.Org.

We arrived at this figure by taking NATO’s official percentages of what each country spends on defence and multiplying this by each country’s GDP. We then compared this with what they should have spent if – like the UK – they were spending the NATO minimum target of 2% of their GDP.

Even France – the second-largest military power in Europe after the UK – has underspent by more than £25bn pounds. Meanwhile the UK’s extra defence spend now stands at over £24bn.

Despite all of this, the EU continues to have pretensions to being a major military power

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

The European Defence Union is official EU policy

Even the EU now calls it “the European Army”

There is no longer any pretence from the EU – they are preparing their own army. This is no longer hidden.

Coat of arms,
EU Military Staff

“It took us a few weeks. And we decided it together, still at 28, and we did it.... Over this past year our common [EU] defence has advanced more than in the previous 60 years.”

- Federica Mogherini, EU Commission Vice-President & de facto Defence & Foreign Secretary, Jun 2017

“The first missions under EU flag were launched already back in 2003. Since then, 34 EU missions have operated on three continents.”

- EU’s ‘European External Action Service’, 24 Aug 2018

Angela Merkel

“We need to be ready to redefine our decision-making and sometimes to waive unanimity... We need to create a European Security Council… We need to create a European Deployment Force with which Europe can act quickly… We should work on the vision one day to create a true European Army... Jean-Claude Juncker said it four years ago: ‘A common European army’

- German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speech to EU Parliament, 13 Nov 2018

New EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen

“Europe is forming an army. A united EU military is becoming a reality.”

– Ursula von der Leyen, former German Defence Minister and new EU Commission President, in her own article in the German press, 10 Jan 2019

Observations

We first started analysing NATO’s numbers in 2015. Back then David Cameron was Prime Minister, Nick Clegg was Deputy PM, Jean-Claude Juncker was in charge in Brussels (although only partially so after long lunches, allegedly) and Angela Merkel had just unilaterally opened the EU’s borders to millions of migrants.The EU Referendum was then still a hope – for people like us.

When Putin illegally invaded Ukraine for the first time in 2014, this was a wake-up call for NATO. A sovereign European country had had part of its territory occupied and annexed. The response at the NATO Summit in 2014 was robust. The problem has been that whilst the UK has continued to live up to its commitments since that Summit, the rest of the EU has not.

Readers will have differing views on military policies over recent years. What counts here is what countries committed to, and what they have actually done, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the West’s policies.

Our analysis clearly shows once again that when it comes to actions rather than words, the EU is all talk and no (combat) trousers.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

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[ Sources: NATO | EU Commission | MoD ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sat 25 Mar 2023

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