Germany is a special case.

They're by far the EU's richest member and they haven't paid anything close to the 2% in decades.

As a nation, you either believe national defense is a thing or you don't. Germany doesn't.

And while you single out Germany, at least 14 members now exceed their 2% target. Including the US. The rest have increased their spending, except for Italy (which has actually gone down a bit).

Let's look at the data:

ec.europa.eu - Statistics explained(%25_of_GDP).png

In 2021 the number was...3. Greece, Estonia and Latvia. Since then it's gotten marginally better, but I have no idea where the number 14 came from. They're nowhere near that:

politico.eu - Is there a war on big EU powers miss NATO spending targets again allies

Only 7 of 30 alliance members spent at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense in 2022.

7. And one of them is us:
Of 30 members, only Greece, Poland, the Baltic states, the United Kingdom and the United States spent more than 2 percent of their economic output on defense last year, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s annual report shows.

There's a word for this: freeloading. There's another word for this: deadbeat.

Politico has the data:

Nation / Defense as a % of GDP in 2022:

Greece - 3.54
US - 3.46
Lithuania - 2.47
Poland - 2.42
UK - 2.16
Estonia - 2.12
Latvia - 2.07

That's the 2% club. Notably all these nations except the US, UK and Greece are all ex-Soviet client states.

How about some NATO 'stalwart' countries?

France - 1.89
Italy - 1.51
Germany - 1.49
Canada - 1.29
Spain - 1.09

Sheesh.