§ Lord Hoosonasked Her Majesty's Government:
What has been the relative financial burden on each member state within NATO over the past three years; and what is the relationship of this cost to each country's defence budget and to its GDP.
§ Lord HenleyThe NATO nations continue to organise their collective defence against a major external threat through their membership of the Alliance. A significant proportion of their overall defence spending is devoted to forces and activities in support of NATO, but it is not possible to determine a precise figure for the percentage of each nation's defence budget devoted to NATO, since most of the forces so allocated retain national commitments and roles in parallel with their NATO ones. A broad measure of each country's relative financial burden can be derived from comparing defence spending with GDP, as set out in the table below:
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Table 1—Defence spending as a percentage of GDP 1992 1993 1994 Country per cent. per cent. per cent. Belgium 1.9 1.8 1.8 Canada 1.9 1.9 1.8 Denmark 2.0 2.0 1.9 France 3.4 3.4 3.4 Germany 2.2 2.0 1.8 Greece 5.6 5.5 5.6
Table 1—Defence spending as a percentage of GDP 1992 1993 1994 Country per cent. per cent. per cent. Italy 2.1 2.1 2.1 Luxembourg 1.2 1.1 1.1 Netherlands 2.5 2.3 2.2 Norway 3.4 3.2 3.2 Portugal 3.0 2.9 3.0 Spain 1.6 1.7 1.6 Turkey 3.9 4.1 4.1 United Kingdom 3.9 3.6 3.3 United States 5.1 4.7 4.2