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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (front left) with Donald Trump, in the background Chancellor Angela Merkel
Photo: Francisco Seco / dpa
Germany and the other US NATO partners have further increased their defense spending.
According to initial estimates, spending by European allies and Canada would grow by 4.3 percent this year, said Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
This would increase spending for the sixth year in a row.
US President Donald Trump has long been grumbling about the allegedly unfair burden-sharing in NATO and has primarily attacked Germany because of the comparatively low proportion of its defense spending in the state budget.
At a summit two years ago in Brussels, Trump did not even rule out the United States' withdrawal from the alliance if all allies did not immediately spend two percent of their gross domestic product on defense.
According to the current figures, Germany's expenditures relevant to NATO will rise from 46.9 billion euros in 2019 to a record value of 51.5 billion euros in 2020. According to the current forecast, this amount will correspond to a share of the gross domestic product of 1.57 percent - after 1.36 percent in the previous year.
Only nine allies achieve the two percent target
The sharp rise in the GDP ratio can, however, mainly be explained by the economic slump caused by the Corona crisis.
Before the crisis, it was expected that German spending of 51.5 billion would result in a rate of around 1.42 percent.
According to the figures presented on Wednesday, only nine other NATO members in addition to the USA will achieve the two percent target in 2020: Greece, Great Britain, Romania, Poland, France, Norway and the three Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Many of the other 30 NATO countries are still a long way off.
These include, for example, Spain with a rate of around 1.2 percent, Belgium with 1.1 percent and Luxembourg with only 0.6 percent.
For comparison: According to NATO figures, the USA will spend around 785 billion US dollars (663 billion euros) on defense this year, with a GDP ratio of just under 3.9 percent.
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as / dpa