Greece's Parliament on Sunday approved the 2025 budget, which will see it almost double its defense spending, with a roll-call vote, traditionally regarded as a vote of confidence in the government.
With 159 out of a total of 299 votes cast, the state budget for the fiscal year 2025 was ratified, while the defense expenditure was approved by a larger majority.
Spending for the Defense Ministry will rise to 6.1 billion euros ($6.5 billion) from 3.6 billion euros due to the increase in equipment deliveries in 2025.
"Compared to 2019, by 2025, spending on health will have increased by 74% and spending on defense by 73%, underlining the government's priorities," Minister of Economy and Finance Kostis Hatzidakis had said late November on submitting the budget to Parliament.
Major opposition parties, PASOK and SYRIZA, as well as the Hellenic Solution party, had said before the vote that they would approve the increased defense spending.
Nikos Dendias, the defense minister, told Parliament Saturday that the spending is essential because of the challenges the country faces.
"Is this spending too much? Whoever is positioning themselves on this needs to explain on what criteria they are considering. Is the country threatened? And where is the main threat to the country coming from?" he said, noting that neighbor Türkiye spends 26.8 billion euros on armaments.
Greece and Türkiye, both NATO allies but historic foes, have long been at odds over issues, including where their continental shelves start and end, energy resources, migration, flights over the Aegean Sea and the ethnically partitioned island of Cyprus.
Tensions, however, have eased in recent years as they agreed to reboot relations, pledging to keep open communication channels and work on the issues that have kept them apart.
Greece spends around 3% of its annual economic output on defense, higher than most EU states, mainly because of long-running tension with Türkiye.
Greek armed forces had a 20-billion-euro shortfall during the country's decadelong debt crisis, Dendias said in November, when he announced a shake-up of defense forces to sideline older weapons in favor of drones after lessons drawn from Ukraine's war against Russia.
Among the main changes in the radical overhaul is the creation of an anti-air and anti-drone defense dome covering the whole of Greece.
"Greece today is charting its own roadmap in terms of stability and growth in an international environment of instability," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Sunday, hailing the backing of opposition groups.
Mitsotakis drew a parallel with the difficulties the governments of "big countries," such as France and Germany in particular, and also Italy were now facing in seeking majority support for their own budgets amid political or economic turmoil.
The Greek prime minister also announced five measures to rectify the operation of banks for the benefit of citizens.
Among them are the end of charges for many banking transactions, including bill payments, as well as the contribution of 100 million euros to a program for the construction of new schools by the four largest Greek banks.
Hatzidakis said during his closing speech on Sunday that what the government is seeking is "to have a healthy banking system on the one hand and on the other hand a banking system that actually works for the economy and society – without making citizens feel excluded from it, or more importantly, victims of it."
Greece's financial crisis saw an EU bailout conditional on severe austerity measures and structural reforms and policies, with Hatzidakis saying Greek citizens paid for the survival of the banks out of their pockets.
