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(Bloomberg) – Slovenia and many NATO members are looking for how to expand the definition of state defense spending as they try to call us to allocate more money on security, the Prime Minister of the nation said.
Similar advocate Alliance members aim to establish an integrated work on defense spending in the coming weeks and to submit a proposal to Mark Rutte, Slovenian Premier Robert Golob said in an interview on the occasion of the European political community summit in Albania on Friday.
Rutte has proposed that colleagues spend an additional 1.5% of GDP in defense-related areas by at least 3.5% GDP on core defense and by 2032.
Slovenia, who joined NATO in 2004, presented a plan, aimed at spending 2% of GDP on defense for the first time this year.
Slovenia plans to increase military expenses up to 2% of GDP this year.
However, NATO does not currently have a single standard as to what matters as security expenses, Golob said. Slovenia would support a proposal to include investment in the European Union’s defense industry in the definition, he said.
Premier said, “We cannot spend 5% of GDP and if we are unable to connect two areas, remain competitive.”
Slovenia’s neighbor Croatia is also expecting more information about NATO’s proposal, before they are committed to spending defense.
“Regarding Rutt’s proposal, we are going in that direction and we are already committed to defense expenditure on 3% of GDP,” Croatian Prime Minister Andrez Plankovic told reporters in Tirana. “How much we will really be, we will see after the conclusion of the upcoming NATO summit.”
-With help from Jasmina Kuzmanovic.
(Update with comments from Croatian Premier in the last two paragraphs.)
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