The Diplomat
The Defense Committee of the Congress yesterday asked the Government -with the abstention of Unidas Podemos- to increase “progressively” the budget spending on Defence until it reaches two percent of GDP, in line with what was recently announced by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
“This non-legislative proposal was presented a week before the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, but now it is much more necessary,” said MP Ricardo Tarno, of the PP, during the presentation of the proposal. Strategic autonomy “at the European level” is necessary to “reduce dependence on third countries, not only the US, but also China, India, Brazil, and not only in the military and defense industry, but also in the civilian industry and in health supplies, as we have seen with the COVID crisis and the dependence on third countries,” he continued.
“Spain has to be positioned in this change,” because “we cannot allow strategic autonomy to replace dependence on third countries with dependence on other EU partners,” he warned. “Spain has to be at the forefront in this matter” and, for this reason, it is “essential to increase defense spending by up to 2%,” Tarno said.
The initial objective of the PP, he explained, was to “set clear deadlines” for this, but, finally, the Popular Group has agreed to “make sacrifices” and renounce this request, so that the motion finally urges the Government to “progressively increase investment in Defence until reaching 2% of GDP”.
During the debate, the spokesman for Unidas Podemos (Pedro Sánchez’s government partner), Juan Antonio Delgado, made no mention of the increase in spending and did address, instead, the part of the initiative that refers specifically to the need for the European Union to be endowed with strategic autonomy. UNO Podemos abstained during the final vote.
The participants in the debate, especially the PP and PSOE parliamentarians, insisted that strategic autonomy does not imply “independence” from NATO and, therefore, must be developed in conjunction with the strategic concept to be approved next June during the Atlantic Alliance Summit in Madrid. “Without common defense there will be no European policy,” said Natividad González of the PSOE.
In mid-March, Pedro Sánchez announced the government’s intention to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP, as repeatedly demanded by NATO. The announcement, which took place a few days after the informal European Council of Versailles, convened by the French Presidency of the EU and in which European leaders urged a “substantial” increase in defense spending in the face of the new security challenges arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was opposed by Unidas Podemos and most of Sánchez’s parliamentary supporters. Not even the second vice-president, Yolanda Díaz, who dissociated herself from the rejection of ministers Ione Belarra and Irene Montero regarding the shipment of arms to Ukraine, publicly supported the president’s position. The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, announced on March 16 before her NATO colleagues the “will of the Spanish government” to increase the budget “up to 2%”, although she did not specify the deadlines set by the government to reach this objective.
