Finland defence spending has become one of the most difficult questions in Helsinki, after a cross-party report suggested that the country may need to almost double military expenditure in the coming years to keep its defence credible on NATO’s eastern flank.
The report, presented in early June, was intended to clarify what Finland’s defence could cost in the 2030s. Instead, it has exposed a political gap: while Finnish parties broadly agree that Russia remains the central security threat, none of them appears ready to endorse spending levels comparable to Poland or the Baltic states.
Finland’s defence bill is rising faster than politics can absorb
According to Yle, the calculations are based on estimates from the Finnish Defence Forces (Puolustusvoimat). Finland is spending around €7.7 billion on defence this year, but the estimated need could rise to €14–15 billion annually from 2029. That would be well above NATO’s core defence spending target and close to the level now pursued by countries such as Poland and Estonia.
The increase would fund several capability areas: the renewal of land forces, air and missile defence, drones, new military technology and a possible increase in the number of soldiers. These are not marginal adjustments. They would reshape Finland’s budget priorities for several years.
The political logic is clear, but financially difficult. A credible defence is meant to deter an attack before it happens. The report notes that war would be far more expensive: Ukraine is spending just under one third of its GDP on its defence war, a scale that would be devastating for any peacetime budget.
For Finland, however, moving from deterrence as a strategic principle to deterrence as a permanent budgetary choice is politically harder than it looks.
No party wants to sign the full defence spending cheque
The report was not designed to form a binding political position. It was presented as an information paper, based on Defence Forces calculations, with a more detailed classified version kept outside the public debate. But its conclusions appear to have been too costly for nearly all parties.
The Left Alliance (Vasemmistoliitto) already issued a dissenting opinion during the drafting process. The Greens criticised the level of ambition. The Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset) questioned why the figure was so much higher than the current target. The Social Democrats described it as unrealistic, while the Centre Party argued that the rest of society also has to function.
Even the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), traditionally more hawkish on defence, has stopped short of fully committing the parliamentary group to the new level. Jukka Kopra, the party’s parliamentary group chair, said the paper was a way to “put the cat on the table” — a Finnish expression meaning to raise an uncomfortable issue openly. He personally supports the spending level, but did not speak for the group as a whole.
Minister of Defence Antti Häkkänen (Kokoomus) called the paper serious, but avoided pressing parties for immediate positions and did not state his own final view.
The result is a familiar European dilemma: governments agree that the security environment has changed, but hesitate when the bill arrives.
NATO targets may not be enough for Finland’s security needs
Finland, like other NATO allies, has committed to the alliance’s new spending framework agreed at the 2025 Hague summit. NATO members pledged to invest 5% of GDP annually by 2035, including 3.5% for core defence and 1.5% for broader security-related spending, such as infrastructure and resilience.
The Finnish debate shows that even the 3.5% core defence target may not be enough for some frontline states. Yle notes that Finland’s current 3.5% goal is understood as roughly corresponding to NATO capability targets, which are not public. But the Defence Forces’ needs assessment points to a higher requirement.
If fully implemented, Finland’s spending would move closer to the scale of the Baltic states and Poland. Estonia has set its 2026 defence expenditure at 5.4% of GDP, while Poland plans to spend about 4.8% of GDP on defence in 2026.
That comparison is uncomfortable for Helsinki. Finland shares a long border with Russia and has a strong tradition of territorial defence. But unlike the Baltic states or Poland, it has not yet politically accepted a defence budget permanently near 5% of GDP.
The debt brake makes the Finnish defence debate harder
The main obstacle is not only defence policy. It is fiscal policy.
Finland’s largest parliamentary parties are committed to a political “debt brake” — a promise to reduce public debt. But rapidly rising defence spending and large cuts elsewhere are difficult to reconcile. Doubling defence expenditure while also pursuing more than €10 billion in cuts would be a major political and social challenge.
This places Finland in a different position from Germany, which moved away from its strict debt brake to strengthen defence. Helsinki has so far tried to combine fiscal restraint with a tougher security posture. The new report suggests that this combination may become increasingly unstable.
The debate will likely intensify when the next government is negotiated. For now, the issue has been postponed rather than resolved. Finnish parties agree on the need for credible defence, but not yet on what credibility should cost.
That tension matters beyond Finland. It reflects a wider European problem: NATO’s eastern members face similar threats, but not all are politically ready to finance deterrence at the same level. For Finland, the question is no longer whether defence spending must rise. It is whether the country is prepared to make defence one of the defining budget choices of the next decade.
