French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that his country would spare an additional 6.5 billion euros ($7.6 billion) in military spending over the next two years due to new and unprecedented threats and major conflicts.
The French leader laid out the spending plans in a sweeping speech calling for intensified efforts to protect Europe and support Ukraine in its war against Russia's full-scale invasion. He said France will aim to spend 64 billion euros ($74.8 billion) in annual defense spending in 2027, the last year of his second term. That would be double the 32 billion euros in yearly spending when he became president in 2017.
″Since 1945, freedom has never been so threatened, and never so seriously,'' Macron said in the French president’s traditional speech to the military on the eve of the Bastille Day national holiday. ’’We are experiencing a return to the fact of a nuclear threat, and a proliferation of major conflicts.''
″To be free in this world, we must be feared. To be feared, we must be powerful,'' he said.
He insisted that France can find the money to spend more on the military even as it tries to bring down massive national debts. Conservative and far-right parties have supported increased defense spending, while left-wing parties accuse the government of prioritizing military spending over hard-won social welfare benefits.
Europe is in danger because of Russia’s war in Ukraine and wars in the Middle East. Because ″the United States has added a form of uncertainty," Macron argued. Other dangers he cited included online disinformation campaigns by unnamed foreign governments and propaganda operations targeting children, in "the screen era."
Macron also ordered France’s top military and defense officials to initiate a "strategic dialogue" with European partners regarding the potential role of the French nuclear arsenal in protecting Europe. France and Britain agreed recently to cooperate on nuclear arsenal issues.
His speech came as U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce his stance on Russia on Monday, and the head of NATO is traveling to Washington for two days of talks. Trump last week announced plans to sell NATO allies weaponry that they can then pass on to Ukraine, which has been struggling to repel massive and complex Russian air assaults.
French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu, in an interview published Sunday in La Tribune Dimanche, said that European officials have been making the case to the Trump administration to bolster Ukraine's air defense capabilities.
Lecornu also urged more French spending on defense technology and better training of engineers and technicians. "Big powers and certain proliferating countries are working secretly on quantum computers ... that will be capable tomorrow of revolutionizing the battlefield. Do we want to stay in the game?"
