Italy to hit NATO spending target this year as Meloni preps for Trump meeting

Italy is set to reach NATO's defense spending target of 2 percent of its GDP this year, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said Thursday.

The announcement comes right before Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, and as belligerent Russian leader Vladimir Putin leaves Europe quaking about further military aggression.

“The review carried out according to NATO methodology, conducted with particular care, suggests that we will already be able to reach the 2 percent of GDP target set in 2014 as early as this year," Giorgetti said, during a parliament hearing on Italy's multi-year budget framework.

"We are fully aware, especially in light of current tensions, of the need to increase such spending in the coming years," he added.

Meloni told journalists ahead of her meeting with Trump that Rome will announce its 2 percent at the next NATO summit. Asked whether Italy’s 2 percent target was enough, Trump responded: "It's never enough.”

Italy spent 1.49 percent of its GDP on defense in 2024. It's one of the few European countries, alongside Spain and Belgium, that still don't meet NATO's decade-old defense spending target of 2 percent of GDP. Belgium also announced earlier this month it would reach the goal this year.

However, leaders are widely expected to raise that target to more than 3 percent during a NATO summit in The Hague in June. Meloni is, however, looking to expand the definition of defense spending to also include border patrols and coast guards, among other items.

Trump, a longtime skeptic of the transatlantic military alliance, has been urging NATO allies to raise military spending to 5 percent of their GDP. But according to Italy’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, that proposal is “unthinkable.”

“European countries cannot touch welfare and social achievements. That said, in this context, the 2 percent is no longer a goal to reach, but merely a starting point,” Crosetto said in an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa published Monday.