The law, approved by the country's upper and lower houses and signed by the president, stipulates the annual allocation of 2% of GDP required by NATO for defense, the Czech broadcaster reported. The new law will go into effect in July 2023 and will have to be taken into account when drafting the state budget for fiscal year 2024.
The country's defense budget for 2024 was planned at 130 billion koruny ($5.9 billion) but will increase by 21.5 billion koruny under the new law, the report said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is expected to propose at the NATO summit in Lithuania's capital Vilnius, scheduled for July 11-12, that the current goal of 2% of GDP allocated by each country for defense should not be the ceiling, but a minimum threshold, on which the budgets of member states of the alliance should be based, the media reported.