Czechs under populist leader Babis will not meet NATO defense spending target

Prague — PRAGUE (AP) — Czech Republic lawmakers on Wednesday approved a 2026 budget that falls short of NATO targets for defense spending, despite pressure from the United States and the country’s own president.

Lawmakers loyal to the new government of populist Prime Minister Andrzej Babis voted 104-87 in parliament’s 200-seat lower house to allocate about 155 billion koruna ($7.4 billion), or just 1.7% of gross domestic product, to the Defense Ministry.

The NATO target is 2% of GDP. Czech spending is only higher than 2% if funding for defense-related projects in other ministries is factored in. It is unclear whether that would be acceptable to the alliance, of which the Czech Republic has been a member since 1999.

Babiš argued that his government had other priorities, such as “the health of our citizens”, and said this was the “maximum possible” budget due to the poor state of public finances inherited from the previous government.

NATO members committed their defense spending to at least 2% of GDP in 2014, and the alliance expects all members, including the Czechs, to meet that target last year.

At the 2025 Hague summit, under pressure from the Trump administration, the coalition agreed to go further and invest 3.5% of GDP on core defense needs and another 1.5% on defense and security-related expenditures by 2035.

President Petr Pavel, a retired army general, urged lawmakers to increase the budget and noted Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine: “Today, there is not a single justifiable reason for defense and security spending to freeze.”

The president still has to sign the budget and has said he will because the budget is the government’s business, not his.

Babiš returned to power after his ANO, or Yes, movement won a big victory in the October election, forming a governing coalition with two smaller political groups, the Freedom and Direct Democracy party and Motorists, whose agenda is to distance the country from supporting Ukraine and rejecting some key European Union policies.

US Ambassador Nicholas Merrick reminded the Czechs of their NATO obligations.

“If JKia fails to meet its commitments, it will affect the entire alliance,” Merrick told a security conference in Prague last week. “And I don’t need to remind you and the Czech people how important it is that the Allies honor commitments.”

With the proposed defense budget, “Jekia risks being among the lowest spenders in the alliance and exhibits negative momentum relative to peer NATO partners,” the ambassador said.