How much will Romania have to allocate to defense, according to NATO commitments?

The obligation established at the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague for member states to allocate 5% of GDP to defense would mean that almost all European NATO member countries, with the exception of Sweden, would spend more on defense than on education. For Romania, where budget revenues represent only 34% of GDP, this commitment would mean that almost 15% of the state's budget revenues would be directed towards defense, the highest percentage among European NATO member states.

According to the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, all NATO member states have committed to allocating 5% of GDP to defense, with the exception of Spain. Although this percentage seems equal for all countries, NATO member states do not spend from their national GDP, but from the revenues they collect from various sources (taxes, duties, excise taxes, royalties, capital income, etc.). Because Romania collects only 34% of GDP, according to 2023 data, allocating 5% of GDP to defense would mean that Romania would commit to spending almost 15% of its budget revenues on defense, which would place our country in first place among NATO member countries in Europe. In comparison, France has budget revenues of 51.5% of GDP, so an allocation for defense of 5% of GDP would represent less than 10% of its total revenues. A situation closer to that of Romania can be found in other Eastern European countries with small national budgets as a percentage of GDP: Bulgaria and Lithuania will have to allocate 13.6% of their total budget revenues to defense, and the Czech Republic 12.4%.

In 2023, Romania spent approximately 1.7% of GDP on defense, which represented approximately 5% of the state's budget revenues of 34% of GDP in that year. This proportion was in line with other Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Bulgaria, which spent 2.1% of GDP on defence, with revenues of 41.6% of GDP and 1.5% of GDP, respectively, on revenues of 36% of GDP, slightly below the 5% limit of total budget revenues. In contrast, Western European countries spent less than 3% of their revenues on defense, with the EU27 average for defense spending being 1.3% of GDP and budget revenues representing 45% of GDP. According to these figures, the jump to a threshold of 5% of GDP for defense spending among Western European countries would put much less pressure on their national budgets than in countries such as Romania, which collects very little as a percentage of GDP.

The situation becomes even more dramatic when we also compare national spending on education. In 2023, all European countries spent more on education than on defense, with the EU27 average for education spending 3.5 times higher than defense spending. If all European NATO member states were to follow the agreement reached at the NATO summit in The Hague, Sweden would remain the only European country with a higher budget allocation for education than for defense, assuming we do not calculate the possible allocation cuts to create the necessary fiscal space.

The new focus on strengthening defense spending in the European Union will put disproportionate pressure on member states, and Romania appears to be by far the most affected by this agreement, due to its extremely low budget revenues compared to the EU27 average. From a current defense allocation of 5% of national revenues, the Hague agreement would increase the allocation to almost 15% of national revenues. Moreover, even the possibility of covering these expenses through loans is impossible, given that Romania already has the largest budget deficit in the European Union, at almost 9% in 2024. In addition to the difficulty of achieving the desired budget allocations for the military, European NATO member states also face the likelihood of spending more on defense than on education.

In conclusion, given the current security context and the commitments made, Romania cannot afford to remain at a low level of budget revenue compared to the EU average.

Combating tax evasion and aligning the tax system with the European model could raise budget revenues to bring us closer to the European average (≈45% of GDP), enabling our country to meet its international commitments and, at the same time, have the necessary resources to finance education and long-term development.

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Data source:

• Eurostat - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/default/table?lang=en
• https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/115ee001-f700-41f4-86a9-f3334d1b8e22?lang=en
• https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/e72d221b-a21b-42dd-baef-d971e512ac0c?lang=en
• https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/14a16f4d-d9aa-439b-a31f-71ed3d8ee561?lang=en

Data processing and text design: Dani Sandu

Infographic: Pascalone Media SRL

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