May 31 (Reuters) - The Czech Republic will "probably" miss NATO's target to boost military spending to 2% of gross domestic productthis year, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said in an interview published on Sunday.
"We will do our best" to meet the pledge, Babis told the Financial Times, but he said his government was grappling with a budget shortfall due to overspending by his pro-EU predecessor.
Czech President Petr Pavel has been at odds with the populist Babis' government over its plans to scale back defence spending in the 2026 budget. Even as he signed the budget into law, Pavel warned in March that military outlays were not corresponding to growing security threats and NATO spending commitments.
Babis told the newspaper that Prague was committed to meeting NATO's new target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035 but that NATO allies should focus more on improving capabilities than on spending targets, which could be easily manipulated.
The U.S. plans to tell NATO it will shrink the pool of American military capabilities available to assist the alliance's European nations in a major crisis, Reuters reported this month.
President Donald Trump has long pressed NATO allies to spend more on their defence, a goal that has become increasingly prominent during Russia's four-year war against Ukraine.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth told fellow defence ministers at an Asian security conference on Saturday: "The era of the United States subsidising the defence of wealthy nations is over. We need partners, not protectorates."
(Reporting by Anusha Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Kate Mayberry and William Mallard)
