BRUSSELS (Sputnik) — According to the source, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Canada and the United Kingdom are planning further decreases in defense spending despite NATO's requirements to maintain defense expenditure at 2 percent of a country's gross domestic product (GDP).
The source said several countries, namely Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Romania, had pledged to increase funding for their armed forces, with France allocating for its military a lower amount than demanded by the alliance.
In June, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg raised concerns over an expected 1.5-percent reduction in the alliance's overall defense spending.
In May, Russia's Permanent Mission to NATO reported, citing the most recent estimates of Western experts, that the combined budget of the alliance's 28 members exceeded a trillion dollars, of which the United States contributed $735 billion, while Russian defense spending amounted to some $60 billion.
