“No one can remain motionless. We have an advance, but tomorrow, at the same pace, we would be overwhelmed, “said the president, calling on parliamentarians to vote for the budget for 2026 when he arrives at the Assembly,” because the end of year censorship have a simple consequence: they shift the budget of the armies “.
A budget of the upward armies
Despite public finances as bad, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday during his speech to the armies, an acceleration of the increase in defense spending in France in the next two years against “a brighter world” and the aggravation of threats, emanating in particular from Russia.
“Since 1945, freedom has never been so threatened,” said the head of state in front of an audience of high officers during his traditional speech to the armies on the eve of the national holiday in the gardens of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, at the Hôtel de Brienne.
Europe is “endangered at a time when the war was brought to our soil with the invasion of Ukraine, while the United States added a form of uncertainty” as to the sustainability of its support, explained Mr. Macron and “our Europe is placed on the edge of a large arc of crises”.
Consequently, Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted to strengthen the budgetary effort for the defense already incurred, by adding expenses of 3.5 billion euros in 2026 then again 3 billion more in 2027, so that the defense budget will have almost doubled in ten years under his two mandates, to reach almost 64 billion euros on this horizon.
Military and budgetary independence
France’s defense budget has already passed between 2017 and 2025 from 32.2 to 50.5 billion euros.
“An updating of the military programming law” for 2024-2030, which provides as a 413 billion euros for the armies, “will be presented in the fall, said the head of state.
However, he said he “refused” that this “new and historic effort” is funded by “debt”, at a time when the French government is looking for savings to rectify public accounts.
“Our military independence is inseparable from our financial independence, it will therefore be funded by more activity and more production,” he argued.
“Faced with a brighter world, the nation must be stronger”, because “to be free in this world, you have to be feared, to be feared you have to be powerful,” insisted the president. However, “we have an advance, but tomorrow, at the same rate, we would be overwhelmed”.
Russian threat
The French president notably mentioned “the permanence of a Russian threat, at the borders of Europe […]a prepared, organized, sustainable threat, and which we will have to be able to face “, but also disinformation, the fight against terrorism or the technological ruptures that must be able to follow, on the basis of the conclusions of a strategic national journal which will ultimately be published on Monday.
The additional resources announced should, according to him, help “fill our fragility areas”: ammunition stocks, “saturation weapons and precision weapons”, drones, “spatial capacities” but also the “equipment necessary on a daily basis so that operations are carried out”.
These funds will also be used to strengthen the means of soil-to-air defense, electronic war, whose war in Ukraine has shown the essential role.
Mr. Macron also spoke again on Sunday the European dimension of French nuclear deterrence, stressing that he “mandated the Minister of Armed Forces to initiate a strategic dialogue with our European partners who are ready there”.
“I will come back more specifically, at the end of this year, to the developments that it takes away,” he said.
A mobilization of youth
The president also addressed the question of the mobilization of youth, to whom it is necessary to give “the opportunity to serve”, according to the Elysée.
“I also believe that we must give youth a new framework to serve, in other ways, within our armies,” he said, announcing that he would give guidelines “in the fall”.
A “renovated” volunteer military service could be created to offer young French people to receive military training likely to lead to their commitment to the armies, a source close to the dossier at AFP.