Budapest, Apr 5: Hungary is one of the nine NATO states that will spend 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense in 2023, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday.
“Hungary is one of the nine NATO countries that can spend 2% of their GDP on defense this year. Nine countries is less than a third of all NATO member states, but, nonetheless, we are among them,” Szijjarto told journalists on the sidelines of the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.
In July, Hungarian Defense Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky said that he had given instructions to strengthen the combat readiness of the armed forces and hold intense training exercises in different parts of the country, due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the inflow of migrants to Hungary.
Last year, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that only a strong national army could guarantee the country’s securit,y and that Hungary would seriously strengthen the army over the next decade since European countries could not rely solely on the United States for defense.
In 2006, NATO Defense ministers pledged to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their defense annually. In 2022, NATO’s annual report revealed that only seven of the 30 member nations met the spending guidelines.
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