The army will be unable to fulfil its international responsibilities

The army will be unable to fulfil its international responsibilities

“If nothing changes, Belgium will not be able fulfil its responsibilities to the European Union, NATO and the UN, and proportionally share costs, risks, missions”. This is one of the conclusions that Defence Economy specialist Pr. Wally Struys presented to the Royal Military School on Tuesday evening, which was reported in Le Soir on Wednesday.

For the first time, the professor’s study has taken into account new budget cuts announced by the Michel government.  Cuts that, seeing what is likely to happen to Belgium’s Gross Domestic Product from now until 2019, will change the ratio between GDP and defence budget to 0,48%: NATO norms fix it at 2%.

Pr. Struys underlines the incoherence between these figures and the government agreement, even though the latter recognises that “the defence budget has largely contributed to the consolidation of our public finances over the last few years”.

According to Pr. Struys “if nothing changes, Belgium will not be able to fulfil its financial responsibilities”. 

(Source: Belga)


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