It is essential that the country spends 2% of GDP on defense investments. We need to get rid of the idea that it is something progressive. The 2% of GDP is not for the Greek Kalends. And now. If not in time of war, when will there be time for it? Many countries in the European Union (EU) are even talking about 3 percent,” said former PS Defense Minister Nuno Severiano Teixeira on Tuesday in an intervention in the context of a colloquium in parliament on the issue “Main Options of the National Defense Strategic Concept (CEDN)”, of which he chaired the “Review Board”.
The demand, reinforced in these assertive words of Severiano Teixeira, is one of the recommendations of the report of the aforementioned Council, which included researchers, teachers, diplomats, military personnel and a total of 21 nationally important personalities.
This committee was established in August 2022, the report said delivered to the Minister of Defense at the end of January past and from here to arrive to parliament still took about five months. It is now, since May, the wait until the government requests the planning to be discussed.
Remember that the proposed state budget for 2024 provides for a total consolidated expenditure of 2,850.1 million euros for National Defense, still far from the approximately 5 billion that 2% would represent.
According to the annual report of the Secretary General of NATO for the year 2022, Portugal was the organization’s ninth member state with the lowest percentage of GDP spent on defensewhich corresponds to 1.38%.
In the latest statements on this issue, last July, Prime Minister António Costa stated that “we will make progress” in this objective.
The country only expects to reach 2% in 2030 and this year the target is to reach 1.66% – a target that has been put forward as planned for 2024. However, NATO’s forecast is lower, with an estimate for this year of around 1.48% of the defense GDP. below the manager’s forecast.
O Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Marcos Perestrello stresses that the work of the team of “wise men”, coordinated by Nuno Severiano Teixeira, “has the great merit of doing both: setting priorities and making clear the need to invest more in national defense”.
He also emphasized that “in a country with global interests but very limited resources, it is necessary to have the courage to set priorities, to put certain interests and values above others, and to make it clear that To guarantee our values and interests, we must invest more in our resilience and capabilities”.
Nothing that two other participants in the colloquium have not warned about in recent years. Pinto Ramalho, former army chief of staffrecalled that the number of armed forces “is more than 20% below the authorized number” and that the objectives in the CEDN revision proposal “will only be possible with the right budget”.
Melo Gomes, former Navy Chief of Staffstressed that he has “nothing to oppose” the “vision” for the new CEDN, according to which Portugal has “strategic security challenges” that are “diverse and multifaceted”.
‘What really matters is know how to implement responses to these challengeswhile it is known that the number of military personnel currently on active duty is far below the values allowed by law (about 27%) and that “the situation in terms of financial resources is equally serious,” he stated.
In the 2021 budget, he notes: “There are apparently good intentions, but The world is full of good intentions and hell is full, It is true that the item “personnel costs” (+2.1%) indicates that there is no political concern about the outflow of personnel from the armed forces.”
Source: DN
