SOFIA, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Bulgarian President Rumen Radev on Wednesday expressed concerns about proposals to increase defense expenditure.

Speaking at The Economist Bulgaria Business Summit, Radev said that while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Commission have called for increased defense spending, reaching 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) would be extremely difficult.

"Even a one percent increase in GDP for defense is an immense challenge for the budgets of many European countries," Radev said, adding that such ambitions raise legitimate concerns.

"I believe that we can afford to increase our defense expenditures but only if we follow certain principles leading to cohesion between all the member states," he said.

Recalling the 2019 NATO summit in London, where fair burden-sharing was a key topic and the goal was for each member state to allocate 2 percent of GDP to defense, Radev questioned the fairness of the concept.

Larger countries that produce their own military equipment invest their defense spending back into their own economies, while smaller countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and North Macedonia withdraw these funds from their economies and social systems to invest them in the economies of wealthier nations, he said. Enditem

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