Before the alliance summit: Fico brings Slovakia's NATO exit into play

One week before the NATO summit in The Hague, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has floated the possibility of his country's withdrawal from the defense alliance. With a view to the five percent defense spending target being debated in The Hague, Fico compared NATO to a golf club on Tuesday on Facebook, writing that either Slovakia pays "the new membership fee," equivalent to "seven billion euros," or we leave NATO.

Fico further wrote that a "condition" for any approval of the additional spending would be that the Slovak government could "use the funds at its own discretion." Bratislava should spend the money primarily on projects that could have both civilian and military benefits, citing hospitals and roads as examples.

Referring to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's five percent target, Fico wrote that it was "absolutely absurd to spend so much on defense." Slovakia "doesn't have the means" for that. "Neutrality" was worthwhile for the country.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had previously announced the completion of the increase in defense spending agreed upon in 2014. After Portugal and Canada also announced they would spend two percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense this year, NATO as a whole now meets the two percent target, Rutte said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada. This is "truly great news."

However, there's no time to rest for most NATO countries. Under pressure from US President Donald Trump , an agreement is expected at the summit meeting in the middle of next week to invest at least 3.5 percent of national GDP in defense in the future. An additional 1.5 percent will be added for defense-related spending—for example, for infrastructure. This would achieve the five percent target that Trump has been demanding for some time.

During his first term in office, the Republican repeatedly criticized what he considered inadequate defense spending by the European allies and Canada. He even threatened several times with a US withdrawal from NATO.

The only NATO member not directly affected by Trump's demands is Iceland. The island nation has no armed forces of its own and is therefore always excluded from NATO defense spending statistics. Germany met the two percent target agreed upon for 2024 for the first time last year. Only Poland exceeded 3.5 percent last year.