NATO has changed, the European Union has changed its nature, Germany has turned 180° in its Defense policy and will spend more than ever since World War II, but Portugal will not change what it had already planned for 2018: an area remains as it was before of the most radical geostrategic shift of the last 20 years in Europe. At the end of the Madrid Summit, António Costa did not commit to the 2% of GDP target in military expenditure agreed by the Member States in 2014, which now Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, sees as a baseline and not as a roof. The prime minister shot for a deadline that is announced beyond his term, when for the year he will bring forward defense expenses to values ​​in the order of 1.66% of GDP – which were brought forward only to 2024 -, expressing the intention to reach 2% in the next decade, which throws the calendar to 2032.

As a Government, there are no others: “We do not like collective commitments that are safe, and that more than contributing to the security of the country they are safe, the head of the government made it clear that more than contributing to the security of the country” -feira, at the close of the summit. On the day, “in a previous form of interest, with pressure from our debt, we cannot operate with a reduction, considering the enormous uncertainty of the global economy about our public debt”.

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