Spain's Sanchez insists current defence spending 'sufficient'

MADRID (Reuters) -Spain will meet the new capabilities targets agreed by NATO members in Wednesday's summit in The Hague but it considers its current defence spending of 2% of gross domestic product as "sufficient, realistic and compatible with the welfare state", Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said after the meeting.

Sanchez last week asked to opt out of NATO's demand to increase members' defence spending to 5% of their GDP, a request which NATO chief Mark Rutte publicly rebuffed.

"In today's summit, NATO wins and Spain wins something very important for our society, which is security and the welfare state," Sanchez said, as he insisted Madrid would uphold its commitments to the alliance while thanking the allies for showing "respect to Spain's sovereignty".

"I hope that in tomorrow's European Council in Brussels, we'll talk less about percentages of GDP and more about joint production, joint purchases and interoperability," he added.

(Reporting by David Latona, Inti Landauro and Emma Pinedo; Editing by Andrei Khalip)

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