A review of the NATO Summit meeting in The Hague, 24-25 June 2025
Key events and decisions:
The summit was described as “historic”, but for all the wrong reasons. NATO leaders fawned over a bullying, bellicose US President. And in a new low, the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte (the new Lord Haw-Haw), endorsed President Donald Trump’s reckless and illegal bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities and sat motionless as the US President repeatedly described independent media outlets that questioned the outcome as “scum”. In rejecting diplomacy and supporting an illegal war—also in contravention of Article 1 of NATO’s own 1949 North Atlantic Treaty—the summit delivered a deep blow to the architecture of global affairs and the notion that the alliance is a 'values-based' institution.
In a five-paragraph summit declaration, NATO member states pledged to increase their military spending to 5% of GDP by 2035—a move long called for by the US President. However, Trump said the target does not apply to the United States (which spends slightly more than 3%) and Spain was effectively granted special dispensation to make its own budgetary decisions.
The 5% target in the Hague Defence Investment Plan is made up of:
- 3.5% for traditional military expenditure (“based on the agreed definition of NATO defence expenditure”) for which member states will submit annual plans “showing a credible, incremental path to reach this goal”; and
- an additional 1.5% allocated to military-related spending, to “protect our critical infrastructure, defend our networks, ensure our civil preparedness and resilience, unleash innovation, and strengthen our defence industrial base”.
The new spending targets are a political commitment with no enforcement mechanism. However, “the trajectory and balance of spending” will be reviewed in 2029, “in light of the strategic environment and updated Capability Targets”.
The agreement to double arms spending over the long-term could strengthen NATO's unity but also risks internal divisions and voter discontent. Economically, it may boost the defence sector but could strain public budgets and will likely come at the cost of cuts in vital health and public services across member states. Militarily, it could modernize forces and enhance deterrence but risks escalating tensions with adversaries like Russia and China. (For a more detailed analysis of the Hague Defence Investment Plan, see NATO Watch Briefing 124).
Direct contributions towards Ukraine’s defence and its defence industry will be included when calculating military spending by NATO member states. The NATO leaders also reaffirmed “their enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine”, but this fell short of previous summit commitments to Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to NATO.
The summit declaration also reaffirmed NATO member states’ “ironclad commitment” to the alliance’s Article 5 collective security guarantee.
NATO released public versions of its Updated Defence Production Action Plan (previously approved by NATO Defence Ministers in February 2025); and NATO’s first Commercial Space Strategy and Rapid Adoption Action Plan (previously approved by NATO Defence Ministers in June 2025).
The next summit will take place in Türkiye in 2026 followed by a meeting in Albania in 2027. Neither country has previously hosted a NATO summit.
***Read more in the attached pdf***
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