Germany defence spending — % of GDP (Eurostat COFOG)

## What this measures

Total general government expenditure on defence (COFOG division 02) in Germany, as a percentage of GDP, one value per calendar year. COFOG 02 covers military defence, civil defence, foreign military aid and defence research and development. It is the national-accounts measure: spending by all levels of government, recorded on an accrual basis.

## Why it matters

Germany is the EU's largest economy, and its defence budget sets the pace for European procurement and for the continent's industrial base.

## How to read it

Higher means a larger share of the economy goes to defence. Because every EU country reports under the same classification, levels are comparable across member states and with the OECD COFOG series (defense.cofog.pct_gdp.*). A rise can come from more spending or from slower GDP growth; read it with the euro-level series where one exists.

## What it does not say

It is not the NATO definition of defence spending and will not match NATO's published shares: under COFOG, military pensions are counted as social protection, not defence. In national accounts, weapons systems are recorded when they are delivered, so large procurement programmes appear with a lag. Values for the latest years are revised as countries resubmit their accounts. Data arrive about fourteen months after the year ends.

## Source

Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG), dataset gov_10a_exp (unit PC_GDP, sector S13, cofog99 GF02, na_item TE, geo DE), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/default/table. © European Union. Reused under Eurostat's copyright notice, which authorises commercial reuse of EU member-state data with acknowledgement (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/help/copyright-notice). Palanor dates each annual value at 31 December; Eurostat is not responsible for that change. Refreshed daily by /api/cron/eurostat-sync.