No abstract

This study examines the financing system of the budgets of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.). The NATO is not a supranational organization, with partly exception of the military coordination by SHAPE, but an intergovernmental organization. So far, it’s the only existing military institution at present worldwide.  This 2023 study concerns only the three internal NATO budgets. Therefore, this article is based at the only reference material available, namely the primary budgetary sources of the NATO.   It must also be pointed out that NATO does prepare an annual report concerning the political and military situation. But there is no equivalent concerning an overview of its finances and administrative functioning. The aspects to be investigated are as follows: who is funding the NATO budgets and how? what happens with the money given to NATO? how is NATO’s budget prepared and approved? This article doesn’t treat the military budgets of the member states or the financing of the Parliamentary Assembly of the NATO.

Based at the latest NATO annual report (NATO, 2022) this article examines the number of military personnel in the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) member states between 2014 and 2022. These two years are taken as a result of the NATO decisions at the Wales summit in 2014 to increase the defence expenditures against 2024 to 2 % of the national GDP in every member and also to invest at least 20 % of the national military budget in new material for the different army parts.

Since the beginning of October 2022 the European continent has a new institution: “The European Political Community” (EPC). It’s a meeting of 44 European countries and the leading institutions of the European Union (EU). This article overviews the history and the realisation of the EPC Also the memberships and the aims are a part of this study concerning the most recent European institution.

This study examines the defence expenditures of NATO’s member countries over the recent years. It makes use of the original budget figures of the states as verified by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and published by this military organization. There search of this study is to examine the following points: -            How has defence spending by the member states evolved in the period under consideration (2010-2019);-            Which states already meet the targets of the 2014 Wales summit? (2% GDP for defence and 20% of this budget for investment);The current figures are based on the primary budgetary sources as published by NATO, namely: the latest year report of 2018 (NATO, AR) and especially the most recent figures in the NATO yearly press release (NATO, PR-CP).