Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte rebuffed US president Donald Trump claims that he acquired vows to increase defense spending during the NATO summit in Brussels
“Italy inherited spending commitments to NATO, commitments that we did not change, so no increase in spending,” Conte told reporters “As far as we’re concerned, today we did not decide to offer extra contributions with respect to what was decided some time ago.”
Currently, Italy spends around 1% of it’s GDP on defense, while NATO demands spending of 2% or more for annual military output.
Conte also proposed to his EU partners to exclude defense spending from budget deficit calculations