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ROME

Spain will have to respect the new 5% rule on defense spending NATO is set to adopt, although there will be some flexibility on its application, Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Wednesday.

"Spain will have to respect the rules like everyone else - deeds are one thing, declarations are another,” Tajani told reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit in The Hague, after Madrid claimed it was exempted from the new commitments.

"We said that the objective could not be reached within the initial time frame, and in fact it was extended” from 2032 to 2035, Tajani added.

Sanchez claims to have been granted an exemption from increasing spending to the proposed 5% NATO target, which he has described as "incompatible with our worldview."

Tajani also stressed another achievement obtained by Italy regarding flexibility. “There is the obligation to respect the objective, but not the timeframes,” he explained, adding that a key review of NATO spending will happen in 2029.

“It is important that the scope is extended to security -- the transport and digital spheres, submarine cables, all of this is part of security,” Tajani said.

The Italian minister also said that agreeing to calls for NATO spending to be raised to 5% of national output was not an act of compliance towards the US.

US President Donald Trump has been pressuring European allies to commit to the 5% target at the two-day summit in The Hague.

Spain had been the last holdout on a compromise deal that would see allies reaching 3.5% on core military needs over the next decade, while spending 1.5% on a looser category of "defense-related" expenditures, such as infrastructure and cybersecurity.