Latvia is the leader in the European Union (EU) in terms of defense spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) and in terms of the share of defense spending in the budget expenditures of all EU member states, writes Diena.
This is confirmed by data from the EU statistical office "Eurostat". "Eurostat" regularly collects and analyzes various data from all EU member states, as well as from Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland. The office gathers statistics on national government expenditures across approximately 80 functional categories. Norway and Iceland are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while Switzerland is not. Currently, NATO comprises more than 30 countries.
Latvia's defense spending in 2023 amounted to 3.1% of GDP. This is 2.4 times higher than the EU average (1.3%), and the country ranked first among EU member states in this indicator. Estonia came in second in the EU (2.7% of GDP), followed by Lithuania (2.5% of GDP). Next are Greece (2.2% of GDP), Poland (2.1% of GDP), and Cyprus (1.9% of GDP).
The top ten EU leaders also included Hungary (1.9% of GDP), Denmark (1.8% of GDP), France (1.8% of GDP), and Sweden (1.8% of GDP). Norway (1.8% of GDP), Romania (1.7% of GDP), Bulgaria (1.5% of GDP), and Finland (1.4% of GDP).
Below the EU average in 2023, defense spending was recorded in the Czech Republic (1.2% of GDP), Italy (1.2% of GDP), Slovenia (1.2% of GDP), Slovakia (1.2% of GDP), Germany (1.1% of GDP), Belgium (0.9% of GDP), and Spain (0.9% of GDP).
It should be noted that all these countries are NATO members. Switzerland, which is not a NATO member but maintained a policy of permanent neutrality until 2022, had defense spending in 2023 (0.9% of GDP) that was even higher than that of three NATO members - Portugal (0.8% of GDP), Luxembourg (0.5% of GDP), and Iceland (0.1% of GDP). The lowest defense spending in 2023 was in EU countries not in NATO: Austria (0.6% of GDP), Malta (0.4% of GDP), and Ireland (0.2% of GDP).
