European Union’s foreign policy head says defense spending should increase
The European Union member states need to increase defense spending to keep pace with the dangers that come up with the continent, its foreign policy chief has warned.
Kaza Kalas, who worked as Prime Minister of Estonia till July 2024, said “every euro spent on school, health and welfare (was)” if the block did not maintain a strong rescue.
He said that US President Donald Trump was correct to criticize Europe’s expenses, which sits on an average at 1.9%.
He pointed to Russia to spend 9% of his GDP (GDP) on defense and said that Europe’s expenses were “clearly enough” in the light of the war in Ukraine.
“To stop the war, we need to spend more, it is clear,” she told that BBC World Service Weekend Program,
Kalas stated that member states also need to work together to economically “pressure”, and indicated in a new restriction package next month to mark three years of war in Ukraine.
The European Union needs to be “creative” in terms of limiting Russia’s “ability to tease this war”, he said, Russian President Vladimir Putin is pressurizing the “way to end this war because Putin he The one who started it “.
Before taking the post of European Union last December, Kalas repeatedly called for a high level of defense spending, while she was serving as the first female Prime Minister of Estonia.
In February 2024, she said that she wanted NATO to increase defense spending up to 3% of its GDP.
Members of the Alliance committed at least 2% of GDP of GDP after seizing Crimea’s southern peninsula by Russian forces and Moscow-supported proxy controlled large areas of Eastern Ukraine in 2014.
As the Estonian Prime Minister, Kalas promised more than 1% of the country’s GDP to help Ukraine’s war attempts.
“If every NATO country does this, Ukraine will win,” He told BBC last year,
As NATO estimates for 2024The defense spending of Estonia as the ratio of GDP was the second largest in the military alliance.
In December 2024, NATO General Secretary Mark Rute said that member states would have to “change a warship mentality” and spend more than 2%on defense.
During his first term, US President Donald Trump pressurized NATO members to increase defense spending and later called for commitment to complete 4% of GDP.
Shortly before his second inauguration in January, Trump urged NATO European members to spend 5%, told reporters: “They can all tolerate it.”
Asked if he had seen the conclusion of the war in favor of Ukraine, Kalas said that it “exactly” is still alive in his mind.
He said, “I really see no other option. I mean, if we allow cruel aggression to flourish, we will see it in other parts of the world,” he said.
He said: “All aggressive or aggressive aggressive clear notes in the world are taking notes how we react to Russia’s aggression.”
