Bulgaria, Romania, France and the UK are the only countries, members of both EU and NATO, which meet NATO’s requirement for minimal military budget.

NATO demanded its members’ military budget to amount to two per cent of GDP, Bulgarian news agency BTA said

Defence expenses were not a priority in most European governments, a report on the EU members’ military budgets of the defence market intelligence and analyses company Forecast International showed.

EU’s military expenses in 2007 would reach only $ 266 billion, or 58 per cent of US military budget, the report said as quoted by k2kapital.ru.

Bulgaria and Romania were the newest and the poorest EU members and even though they were currently re-equipping their armies, their military budgets were insignificant by NATO standards.

Greece was decreasing its defence budget aiming at shrinking it to one per cent of the GDP by 2015.

By 2011, EU’s total military expenses would be less than $ 300 billion.