European NATO defence spending

Every European government has now promised to spend more on defence. This is the number that says whether the money moved, and it is deliberately unflattering: because it divides total spending by total GDP, the large economies that have been slowest to rearm pull it down, which is the honest picture of the alliance rather than the encouraging one.

The lag matters and we would rather state it than hide it. SIPRI's figures are compiled from audited national budgets, so the most recent complete year here trails the present by roughly two years. Announcements made since then — and there have been many — are not in this line yet. That is the point of keeping it: in two years it will show which of them were real.