NATO’s North Atlantic Council has approved the alliance’s common funding plan for the coming years and a major investment in fuel infrastructure.
The Council approved the 2027-2031 Common Funding Resource Plan on Wednesday 22 July, setting out how the alliance will invest in shared priorities over the next five years. According to NATO, the plan gives allies a forward-looking picture of expected resource needs and is intended to ensure common funding keeps pace with the alliance’s increased level of ambition in a more challenging security environment.
As part of the decision, allies agreed the 2027 funding ceilings for NATO’s Military Budget, Civil Budget and Security Investment Programme, raising total common funding to up to €6.5 billion.
The Council also approved the NATO Fuel Supply Chain Capability Programme Plan, a €27 billion investment to modernise the alliance’s existing fuel storage and distribution infrastructure. According to NATO, it will support new facilities, including pipelines, in the eastern and south-eastern part of the alliance, and ensure NATO forces have the energy supplies they need for warfighting readiness.
NATO said common funding supports the capabilities and infrastructure that help keep one billion citizens safe, strengthening deterrence and defence, enabling operations and missions, and underpinning the alliance’s command and control processes. The plan also provides resources for priority support to Ukraine, including the NATO Security Assistance and Training to Ukraine initiative and the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre.
Common funding is the pool of money to which all members contribute according to an agreed cost-share formula, used for assets and infrastructure that serve the alliance as a whole rather than any single nation. It sits apart from the defence spending targets that individual members meet through their own national budgets, and its expansion reflects the broader increase in allied military investment agreed in recent years.
This can’t be right because I read that NATO can’t fight in Europe without US logistics and here the US only contributes 15% of this budget, the same as Germany 15% and slightly more than the UK on 10%.