The Swedish Defense Minister announced his intention to increase military spending to 5% of GDP

The Swedish authorities intend to increase the country's total military spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP). This was announced on May 31 by the Minister of Defense of the state, Pal Jonson, in an interview with Bloomberg.

"We have a trajectory leading to 3.5% for net military spending and then 1.5% for military defense spending. So that's a total of 5%," he said.

The agency notes that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will try to increase the military spending target for the member countries of the bloc at the upcoming summit in June. At the same time, only 23 of the 32 NATO member countries have reached the current target of 2% of GDP.

Weapons surcharge: the EU has approved a plan to strengthen the union's defense

This will hit the economy of the association — the amount required for rearmament is four times its annual budget.

On May 30, British Defense Minister John Healey announced an increase in defense spending to 3% of GDP by 2034. As Healy said in an interview with The Times, the kingdom currently spends 2.3% of GDP on defense. According to the newspaper's sources, the British Strategic Defense Review (SDR), which the government will publish in June, says that the 3% defense spending figure will certainly be reached in 2034.