BERLIN, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- The German government has submitted a strategy paper to NATO in which Germany promises to increase its military spending to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2024, German media reported on Wednesday.
"This increase will continue in the years after 2024," the German news agency (dpa) cited the strategy paper which was submitted on Tuesday.
However, the German strategy paper did not include plans or figures on how to achieve the target of 1.5 percent until 2024. In order to meet the set targets, Germany's defense budget would need to increase from 43.2 billion euros (49.2 billion U.S. dollars) to around 60 billion euros in 2024, depending on the development of Germany's GDP.
NATO sources said that the German strategy paper will probably not meet the expectations in NATO headquarters, especially not those of U.S. President Donald Trump, dpa reported.
The financial commitment for military spending by the German government came at a difficult time. German media reported on Monday, that Germany's Finance Minister Olaf Scholz needed up to 25 billion euros to maintain the budget of the German government until 2023 due to lower tax revenues and higher expenditures.
In addition, the German Economic Ministry had nearly halved its growth forecast for the German gross domestic product to 1 percent from originally 1.8 percent last week.
Germany's Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen had reaffirmed the goal of spending 1.5 percent of Germany's GDP in military expenditures by 2024 during her visit to the Baltic states earlier this week but emphasized that it would be possible to spend a lot of money on "your own armies" without "doing anything for NATO".
The United States have long demanded a more equal distribution of military spending among NATO member states. At a NATO summit in Brussels last summer, Trump had warned that the United States could withdraw from the NATO alliance if not all alliance partners spent two percent of their GDP on defense.
