The World Federation of Trade Unions, the militant voice of 105 million workers, unequivocally condemns the new increase of the NATO budget which sharpens even more the confrontation and deepens the preparations and the risk for a generalized imperialist conflict with disastrous consequences for the popular strata and the ordinary people who always pay the cost of the imperialist antagonism.
More specifically NATO announced that will increase its military budget for 2024 by 12% to 2.03 billion euros and its civil budget by 18.2% to 438.1 million euros. The military budget covers the operating costs of NATO Command Structure headquarters, missions, and operations around the world while the civil budget funds personnel, operating costs, and programme expenditures of NATO’s headquarters and its international staff.
This new provocative soaring of military expenditures, which is taking place in a period of a generalized lack of adequate policies for the protection of ordinary people from inflation and shrinking of their purchasing power, proves once again that for military expenditures there is always money while the social expenditures are constantly decreasing.
The international class-oriented trade union movement reiterates its demand for the immediate dissolution of NATO and all military coalitions, the complete abolition of nuclear weapons, and respect for the independence and sovereignty of all states.
