Reference News Network, January 13 report: According to the Spanish website "ABC," the Spanish government spent several months trying to form its own clear position on dealing with Trump's policies. Unlike other EU member states, Spain not only refused to increase defense spending to the latest 10-year target set by NATO, which is 5% of GDP, but also jointly condemned the event of Venezuela's President Maduro being forcibly controlled with leftist forces in Latin America. However, the reality is more complex: strategic dependencies are not easily changed by political statements.
In this context, the demand for weapons from Spain and the EU has been growing rapidly, while their own supply capabilities are seriously insufficient. Therefore, as expected, Spain has begun to expand its procurement of American weapons.
For a long time, the EU has outsourced defense affairs through NATO, forming a strategic dependency that is difficult to reverse in the short term. Since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, EU security and defense budgets have significantly increased, and they will further accelerate growth in 2025, forcing the EU to purchase more weapons from the United States under Trump's leadership. The U.S. threat to Greenland has become increasingly clear, causing the EU's military modernization plan aimed at achieving greater independence in the medium term to face real constraints right from the start.
In the first 10 months of 2025, Spain's total weapon imports reached 374.5 million euros, an increase of 9.8% year-on-year. Most of these imports came from countries outside the EU: this proportion reached 57.6% in 2025, higher than 54.2% in the same period last year. Although this data only reflects part of the weapons trade in specific categories, it is clear that a considerable portion of Spain's increased defense spending in 2025, in order to fulfill NATO obligations, went to foreign defense companies, especially the United States.
Although the Spanish government publicly expressed opposition to military rearmament and the policies of the Trump administration, the reality is that due to the inability of the EU market to meet Spain's weapon needs, the United States further consolidated its position as Spain's largest weapons supplier in 2025. Similar situations are common among other EU member states. According to customs data published by Eurostat, between January and October 2025, the total value of weapons imported by the 27 EU member states from the United States reached 1.636 billion euros, making the United States the second-largest arms supplier to the EU after South Korea (2.406 billion euros). Although the overall arms procurement of the EU is on the rise, the import growth from the United States is particularly prominent, with a year-on-year increase of as high as 45.3%.
This trend is not surprising. Previously, experts from multiple sources (including experts from NATO member states) had already predicted this. Javier Colomina, special representative of the NATO Secretary-General for southern neighbor countries and a Spanish diplomat, admitted that the EU "continues to purchase large amounts of weapons from the United States because the European defense industry is fragmented and lacks sufficient capacity to meet the increasing investment demands." He pointed out that Europe still has shortcomings in certain key technological fields, such as the inability to independently produce fifth-generation fighter jets, which also explains why the EU continues to purchase F-35 aircraft from the United States.
Colomina further warned: "The industrial sectors need development, but a single country cannot match a country with 35 million people that supplies equipment for a million army." His implication was that in the short term, the EU will find it difficult to get rid of its dependence on the United States in defense matters. (Translated by Wang Meng)
Original source: toutiao.com/article/7594781409710064169/
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