Slovakia to meet NATO defence budget target by 2022

Slovakia will increase its military budget to the NATO target of 2% of gross domestic product by 2022, 2 years earlier than planned, President Zuzana Caputova told NATO officials in Brussels on 25th June.

‘In relation to the 2% of GDP, we are pleased to achieve this target even earlier, in 2022 - that is 2 years earlier’ than previously stated, Caputova said, quoted by Slovak media in Brussels following talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Slovakia, a NATO and eurozone member state of 5.4 million people, currently spends 1.73% of its GDP on defence, according to the 2019 state budget. 

Slovakia had earlier committed to reach NATO's recommended 2% of GDP military spending target in 2024.

NATO member states agreed to the spending target in 2014.

Bratislava will spend nearly €900 million ($1.02 billion) on defence in 2019, the finance ministry said.

Defence Ministry state secretary Robert Ondrejcsak told AFP on 25th June that most of this budget will be spent on a comprehensive modernisation of the country's army.

‘We will soon get rid of technical dependence on Russia,’ he said.

Ondrejcsak was referring to Slovakia's current dependence on Russian military hardware, a legacy of its past in the Communist bloc before 1989.