The Czech Republic must allocate more funds for defense to meet NATO goals, the US permanent representative to the alliance said at a conference in Prague, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
"It is disappointing that (the Czech Republic) has not made more progress in implementing the Hague defense commitments," Matthew Whitaker said at the "Prague Defense Summit" forum, organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Unfortunately, the trend is for the Czech Republic to be at the bottom of the alliance when it comes to defense spending."
"That's the message I conveyed yesterday and today personally to our friends in the Czech Republic," he continued.
According to him, the United States remains committed to NATO, including its commitment to defending allied territory. "However, we also expect our allies to fulfill their obligations," he said.
So far, the Czech Republic, under a series of governments, has not met NATO's goal of spending even the minimum of 2% of its gross domestic product on defense, Reuters notes. It will be achieved by Prague only next year. At the same time, the Czech Republic has not outlined any clear plan for how it intends to achieve the new target of 3.5% defense spending by 2035, plus 1.5% for defense-related infrastructure, agreed at the alliance's summit in The Hague in 2025.
The Czech government of populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who returned to power late last year, has proposed cutting this year's defense spending to levels of around 1.7 - 1.8% of GDP, and next year plans to spend 2%.
Babiš argues that his country needs money to build infrastructure and hospitals and therefore has limited resources for defense, Reuters reports.