Shifting Axes

Sánchez’s isolated position contrasts with 2020, when he was a central player in negotiating the EU’s NextGeneration post-pandemic recovery funds. Back then, he formed part of a united Southern bloc, with like-minded leaders in Italy and Portugal also pushing for the unprecedented stimulus — for the first time, funded by common EU debt. That agreement centered on boosting state investment in the green transition, digitalization, and social policies, albeit within a framework heavily weighted toward public-private partnerships. It had also provided a context in which Sánchez could govern in coalition with left-wing Unidas Podemos on a moderate social democratic agenda.

But since Trump’s return to office and his administration’s subsequent threats to upend the Western military alliance, the pace of the EU’s response has been set by the “Weimar triangle” countries of France, Germany, and Poland. In the strained moments of February and early March, as Trump administration officials temporarily interrupted certain military aid to Ukraine and postured about a major reset of relations with Russia, it was difficult to distinguish rhetoric from intent on both sides of the Atlantic. The night of his election victory this February 23, Germany’s soon-to-be chancellor, Friedrich Merz, called for “independence” from Trump’s America and warned that NATO risked disappearing altogether — as he announced defense spending would be exempt from the country’s fiscally conservative debt rules.

Yet as key EU leaders spoke of strategic autonomy from the United States, this seemed more about softening up domestic public opinion for rearmament — and the need to ramp up military support for Ukraine — than any credible collective policy goal for the bloc. With little possibility of the EU replacing US intelligence, air, and naval capabilities over the next decade, the likes of Poland and the Baltic states assumed that Washington would remain the ultimate guarantor of their security.

Moreover, Merz and his predecessor Olaf Scholz both ruled out further EU financial transfers along the lines of NextGeneration to fund a serious expansion of the continent’s military-industrial base. Instead the European Commission’s €800 billion ReArm Europe plan looked to place most of the burden for financing rearmament (€650 billion) on already heavily indebted national treasuries — activating a temporary four-year escape clause from EU budget rules for defense spending.

For his part, Sánchez has kept a low public profile around the EU’s rearmament drive. He has chosen not to attend certain events, like the “Coalition of the Willing” summit in Kyiv on Victory Day last month, that would have drawn further media attention to a policy focus which does not have the same public buy-in as elsewhere on the continent. Behind the scenes, he has engaged in a difficult balancing-act between keeping the various elements of his governing coalition onboard at home, while also adapting himself  to the changing boundaries of the EU mainstream.

As a center-left politician whose whole conception of governance is tied up with the EU’s multilateral structures, Sánchez did not directly challenge the bloc’s race toward a new military Keynesianism during the first months of Trump’s presidency. Instead, in aiming to preserve his seven-year record of expansionary social spending, he has pushed for greater flexibility around Spain’s own commitments under the ReArm Europe deal while also insisting that new defense spending levels had “to be made compatible with the social, environmental and international responsibilities of member-states.”

He has also repeatedly argued for the ReArm Europe deal to be reframed around a broader concept of security — one which would also incorporate investment in areas like critical infrastructure, civic defense, and cybersecurity. At times, particularly in the run up to March’s European Council summit, this emphasis involved a genuine push to secure greater balance in the EU’s spending plans, as Sánchez insisted it better reflected Southern Europe’s distinct security needs. But this is also a discourse which he then deployed domestically to mitigate controversy around new defense spending in April — allowing him to frame a historic increase in the military’s budget in sanitized terms.

Contradictions

According to La Vanguardia’s Enric Juliana, in the wake of March’s EU summit, where his proposal for a broader focus for ReArm Europe was rejected, Sánchez still believed there was a margin for negotiating a partial “Spanish exemption” for a lighter rearmament program. Yet with June’s NATO summit on the horizon and as pressure from the Trump administration mounted by early April, his inner circle also prepared an initial shift toward increasing defense spending — a move that could act as an overture to the United States while also testing out the reaction of public opinion and PSOE’s parliamentary allies.

Tensions with Washington had spiked in April, over Sánchez’s meeting with Chinese president Xi Jingping the same week that Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs on “Liberation Day.” The Spanish premier has been among the EU’s most vocal proponents of pursuing closer commercial and diplomatic ties with China, for the sake of balance with the United States. But ahead of Sánchez’s meeting with Xi, US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent warned that his position was tantamount to Spain “cutting [its] own throat” — before pressing Spanish finance minister Carlos Cuerpo for a clear commitment on defense during a tense meeting a few days later in Washington.

Announced ten days after his Beijing trip and within twenty-four hours of Pope Francis’s death, Sánchez’s historic €10.4 billion defense spending increase aimed to ensure Spain’s military budget will reach the preexisting NATO target of 2 percent of GDP immediately this year rather than by the previous target of 2029. This is a massive acceleration of defense spending (amounting to a 50 percent hike on 2024 expenditures) but also incorporates nearly €5 billion of broader security expenditure, much of which would not be categorized as defense spending under NATO guidelines. Commitments like the €1.75 billion allocated for emergency and natural-disaster management seemed carefully calibrated to make the package tolerable, under protest, for PSOE’s left-wing coalition partner, Sumar.

Criticisms from Sumar’s deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, were relatively muted, and she never questioned her colleagues’ continued place in government. Yet within her ranks, there was growing anger around military spending. The Communist-led Izquierda Unida expressed “its absolute rejection of the decision taken by the cabinet,” insisting that “it does not respond to the spirit with which the government was formed in 2023.” The following day it threatened to leave the government (where it holds one cabinet post) after it was revealed that the interior ministry had signed a contract to purchase 15 million bullets from an Israeli company.

That threat led to Sánchez moving swiftly to revoke the Israeli contract, of which he claimed to have been previously unaware. But it also pointed to a basic contradiction in his line on security. Even as Sánchez insisted that only 19 percent of the new spending would go on weaponry, and played up investment in digital and telecommunication programs, El País was reporting that the €700 million proposed to upgrade the military’s field-radio systems would go to a consortium that included Israeli defense company Elbit. Sánchez has consistently staked out the most pro-Palestinian positions among EU leaders since the Israeli invasion of Gaza – going so far as to refer to Israel as a “genocidal state” on May 14. Yet his defense ministry has continued to buy weapons and hardware from Israeli companies in cases where it claims no alternatives could be sourced. This trend is likely to be reinforced by this abrupt ramping up of defense spending.

Nor do the contradictions end there. The scale of the €10.4 billion hike in defense and security spending has meant Sánchez is already coming up against the limits of his explicit pledge not to “cut a single cent of social or environmental spending.” In order to avoid a potential government crisis, the budget overhaul to accommodate the increased defense expenditure was not submitted to a parliamentary vote — a move justified on the grounds that it would only involve reallocating already approved funds. Instead, according to the government, alongside an increased tax take and efficiency savings, this money will come from unspent EU Next Generation funds, originally expected to fund policy priorities like the green energy transition.

Indeed, there was a certain irony that only days after announcing this surge in defense funding, Spain suffered the worst power blackout in decades in Europe due to weaknesses in its privatized electricity grid and a failure to invest sufficiently in costly megabatteries as its renewable sector expanded. The shrinking fiscal space now available to Sánchez’s government might not yet have translated into direct cuts in the welfare state or existing green spending. However, it surely will constrain its ability to expand funding in such areas in future — particularly as Sánchez’s weak parliamentary majority means there is little margin to advance the type of progressive tax reforms cited in the coalition’s program for government.

Narrowing Margins

Accepting the 5 percent commitment at next week’s NATO summit would have complicated the situation further. Pressure on Sánchez has risen over the last month as US and NATO officials have doubled down. In May, Rutte insisted that Spain would “without a doubt” reach the 5 percent target. A week later, after a meeting with Spain’s foreign minister, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement urging “Spain to join its Allies in allocating 5 percent of its GDP to defense.”

With European leaders looking for a way to accommodate Trump’s revised terms for the continuation of the US security guarantee, the debate leading up to the NATO summit has largely been restricted to the timeframe for meeting the “3.5 plus 1.5” percent target. Rutte prefers a strict seven-year deadline, with mandatory yearly targets, whereas Canada and Western European national leaders are pushing to extend that to a full decade, with greater flexibility around annual increases. Spain alone has publicly voiced its opposition to the overall commitment — though the government’s preference was for a joint declaration at the summit with enough ambiguity that it could sign up without facing a major crisis at home. Even before a major corruption scandal in PSOE left his administration’s immediate future in doubt, the stakes had been raised by his allies — with Izquierda Unida again taking a firmer stand compared to other elements within Sumar. “If Spain were to accept the brutal rearmament demanded by Trump, it would be impossible for Izquierda Unida to remain in government,” tweeted Communist leader Enrique Santiago on June 7. Podemos leader Ione Belarra also laid down the gauntlet to him, insisting to his face in parliament “you lack the guts to say ‘no’ to Donald Trump.”

Yet receiving Rutte’s uncompromising final draft of the joint declaration on Wednesday, amid the most serious crisis of his seven years in office, Sánchez issued his strongly worded letter rejecting the target and announcing Spain would not increase its defense spending further. In the text, for the first time, he attacked the basic premise of the new military Keynesianism, namely that higher military spending with sustained cuts to other areas of the state would produce an overall economic stimulus. Against this, he argued that not only would Rutte’s plan “exacerbate the current diversion of European savings to foreign markets,” it would also slow down economic growth rates through “the diversion of investment from crucial activities with a higher multiplier effect than the defense industry (eg education, healthcare, digital technology).”

Sánchez is now hoping other states that have concerns about the 5 percent target will voice their opposition at next week’s summit — as he looks to use a potential confrontation with Donald Trump to reenergize his demoralized base. The sleaze case, involving the last two heads of organization in PSOE, has generated a crisis of confidence in Sánchez’s leadership both within his own party and the wider progressive electorate. But his ability to hold the line against Trump’s heavy-handed diplomacy would represent a major boost, as he argue the 5 percent target should be optional.

Two years ago, when the coalition government unexpectedly secured reelection, Spain was held up as an exception in a Europe that was turning rightward. Sánchez, in particular, stood out as a center-left leader who had benefited electorally through cooperation with forces to his left. On foreign policy, he has also been a relative outlier in the EU in terms of his condemnation of the genocide in Gaza and his refusal to engage in the warmongering over Iran. Yet as Europe’s political mainstream embraces rearmament under Trump’s leadership, the margin open to Sánchez is shrinking ever further.