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US President Donald Trump stated that Poland was one of just two countries that previously met NATO’s defense spending target of 2% of gross domestic product (GDP), which was recently increased to 5% of GDP by 2035 on Trump’s demand.
“Poland was one of two nations that paid more than they were supposed to with NATO,” according to the US President.
“I don’t know if anyone knows that, but there were two nations, and Poland paid more than they were supposed to,” he further commented.
These remarks were made during a meeting with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who achieved a narrow victory in May’s Polish presidential elections after receiving Trump’s endorsement.
However, a closer examination of NATO’s historical data on allies’ spending commitments reveals that Trump’s claims are incorrect.
In 2023, ten NATO allies, including the US, met the target, increasing to 18 countries in 2024.
Looking back to 2014, when NATO’s 2% of GDP defense spending target was agreed upon during the Wales Summit, three countries – Greece, the United Kingdom, and the United States itself – were already meeting the threshold.
Other allied countries were slow to meet this commitment.
Poland was the sole country to increase its defense spending beyond 2% in the following year, in 2015, but its spending fell below the benchmark between 2016 and 2019, according to NATO data reviewed by EuroVeirfy.
Poland has been continuously meeting the target since 2020, significantly increasing its spending following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Latvia and Estonia have also consistently met the 2% target since 2018 and 2019, respectively, according to NATO’s data.
So, there has been no year in which Poland was among just two allied countries other than the US that hit the 2% target.
If Trump was referring to current EU member states only, his claim gets closer to being accurate.
Yet, only in 2015 was Poland among two current EU member states, along with Greece, that reached the target.
The figures provided by NATO differ from other sources due to how both defense expenditure and GDP forecasts are calculated.
Data from the World Bank suggests that in 2015, Poland was among three EU member states — along with Greece and Estonia — that surpassed the 2% target, further contradicting Trump’s claims.
In June, NATO allies committed to an increased defense expenditure target of 5% of GDP during the Hague Summit, following months of mounting pressure from the Trump administration.
They are expected to reach that target by 2035.
All NATO European allies and Canada are forecast to reach the 2% of GDP target for the first time this year, as per figures recently released by the military alliance. This comes over a decade since the target was first set.
These forecasts would bring joint defense spending by allies from Europe and Canada to 2.27% of GDP, increasing to 2.76% of GDP when also including the US’s contribution.
Poland is forecast to spend almost 4.5% of its GDP on defense this year, making it the largest current contributor in terms of proportion of GDP among NATO allies.
