According to estimates released in the annual report of the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, last year, Portugal invested 1.46% of its GDP in military spending.

The country was therefore below the 2% of GDP target, and ahead of only five other NATO member countries: Canada (1.45%), Slovenia (1.37%), Luxembourg (1.30%), Belgium (1.29%) and Spain (1.24%).

The largest share of Portuguese investment goes to personnel, with the government spending 58.6% of the approximately 4 billion invested in the sector, a higher value than at least since 2014, when investment in defense was 2.263 billion.

However, the weight of personnel expenses is less significant today than it was 10 years ago, when this share represented 81.3% of investment.

At that time, Portugal also had more military personnel – around 30.7 thousand, less than the 24 thousand estimated for 2024.

Next comes spending on equipment, which represents 19.5% of global investment, more than double the amount in 2014, when Portugal allocated just 8.4% of its budget to that category.

Even so, it was the third NATO country that spent the least on equipment, in percentage terms, ahead only of Canada (17.8%) and Belgium (15.2%).

Close to 18% of the Portuguese Government's Defense budget went to operations, maintenance and other expenses (which represented 10.2% in 2014) and the remaining 3.9% to infrastructure (which in 2014 was no more than 0.1%).

Last week, the Ministry of Finance announced that it will ask the European Commission to activate the clause that allows defense-related expenses, up to the limit of 1.5% of GDP, not to be counted in the limits imposed by the ceilings on net primary expenditure, defined in the National Medium-Term Structural Budget Plan (POENMP), for 2025-2028.

Likewise, it added in a statement defense-related expenses, up to the limit of 1.5% of GDP, will not be counted in the assessment of compliance with the reference value for the deficit (3%).

"This decision was agreed upon with the largest opposition party, and the Socialist Party was consulted by the Government in this process," said the Government.