In 2025, all EU countries that are members of NATO met the alliance’s 2% of GDP target for the first time. However, several frontline countries are increasing their spending at a faster rate, while a large group is limiting itself to the bare essentials.
According to SIPRI data cited by Euronews, European NATO members as a whole increased military spending by 14% in 2025—to approximately 739 billion euros—marking the sharpest increase since the 1950s.
Which countries are rearming the fastest?
Poland leads the way: in 2025, it allocated 4.48% of its GDP to defense—more than double the previous benchmark and the highest figure in the alliance, surpassing even the United States with its 3.22%, according to NATO estimates.
Behind it lies an entire “front” of frontline states: Lithuania at 4% of GDP, Latvia at 3.73%, and Estonia at 3.38%.
The next group consists of the Nordic countries. Denmark has reached 3.22% of GDP, Finland 2.77%, and Sweden 2.51%; the latter two have only in the past three years abandoned their long-standing policy of military non-alignment and joined the alliance.
Greece, which traditionally spends heavily on defense for reasons related more to Turkey than to Russia, remains at 2.85%.
“The rise in defense spending has become one of the few positive drivers of economic growth in Europe amid a series of continuous negative shocks,” says Tomáš Dvořák, an economist at Oxford Economics.
However, for European industry, the key issue is not so much the volume of spending as its direction, and a significant portion of this money never actually reaches European factories.
According to Oxford Economics estimates, about 40% of the EU’s spending on military equipment goes toward imports from countries outside the union.
In other words, roughly two out of every five euros spent on weapons go to suppliers outside the EU.
