"The risk of seeing Russian tanks in Brussels is almost zero"

The leader of the French-speaking Belgian right, whose party is one of the pillars of the government, considers it "hysterical" to want to increase the defense budgets of NATO countries to 5% of GDP, as demanded by Washington.

"It's collective hysteria to think that we need to reach 5%," declared Georges-Louis Bouchez, president of the Reform Movement (MR, liberal), in an interview with the newspaper Le Soir on Saturday.

The government led by Flemish conservative Bart De Wever is ready to "make every effort to reach 2% on the military front" (compared to 1.3% currently), he adds. But going beyond that will require integrating "expenditures such as the fight against drug trafficking, strengthening our police and justice system," and "investments in cybersecurity." "Reaching 5% in five years is impossible for Belgium, or we have to stop all our other policies," he states. "Let's be clear, the risk of Russian tanks one day being on the Grand Place in Brussels is close to zero," Georges-Louis Bouchez also asserts.

In Belgium, a country governed by coalitions, an agreement is required between all parties involved at the federal level (currently five) before defending a common foreign policy position in an international forum. At this stage, "there is no agreement" on the level of increased military spending, according to the MR president, while the issue will be the focal point of the NATO summit convened in ten days in The Hague.

Alliance Secretary General Mark Rutte has proposed an overall figure of 5% of each member country's gross domestic product, but in the form of an addition of two types of expenditure. This would involve raising the level of military spending strictly speaking to 3.5% of GDP by 2032, and at the same time to 1.5% of GDP all those related to security in the broadest sense, such as border protection, military mobility or even cybersecurity. For their part, Donald Trump's United States, judging that Canada and European countries are not spending enough , is demanding that a 5% commitment be officially formalized at the NATO summit on June 24 and 25. Washington claims that the 32 member countries are "very close to a consensus" on this figure.