The French Assembly has started this Monday the debate on a key law for the country, the Military Programming Law (LPM), which provides for a historic increase in defense spending (418,000 million) with the aim of reinforcing and modernizing the Army in a context international war-marked Ukraine. The Government, greatly weakened by the crisis opened by the pension reform (approved by decree and with almost the entire parliamentary arch against it), hopes to carry out the rule before July 14 (National Holiday), despite of not having a majority in the seats.
The Law, which was announced in January, foresees military spending of 418,000 million between 2024 and 2030, a third more than the budget projected in 2019. It is the largest effort in defense matters since the 1960s. Troops will be increased and weapons, so that “France continues to be a world power”, in the words of Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
He already said that “there is an important part” that will be allocated to the modernization of the French nuclear device. It includes the construction of a new nuclear aircraft carrier and the launch of a third generation of submarines capable of delivering atomic weapons. These figures will allow France to meet the NATO objective of allocating 2% of GDP to military spending.
Since the war began, French President Emmanuel Macron has insisted that Europe must be autonomous from other powers, not only on the energy front, but also on the military front. The war has meant a shift in defense matters, since all the countries have sent aid to Kiev and Europe, which has been emptying its arsenals for decades, finds that it is not prepared for a war, let alone a modern one, with drones.
In the case of France, it does not have the necessary stock in the event of a high-intensity conflict. The previous law reflected other needs: the country was present in countries like Mali or Burkina Faso (where it has already emerged), with small, highly mobile anti-terrorist units and with little weaponry to combat insurgent or terrorist groups.
Nothing to do with the current war, where on the other side there is a defense giant such as Russia, with a larger battlefront and a gigantic need for weapons. Ukraine spends about 15,000 shells a day, which is much more than what Europe planned to use in a whole year.
All countries have multiplied spending to reverse the situation. Macron has repeated that the aid offered to Ukraine cannot weaken the country’s defensive capacity. In the seats, some criticize a budget waste, just at a time when a pension reform has been approved, which forces the French to retire two years later to prevent the system from running into deficit.
Ecologists advocate nuclear disarmament and La France Insoumise asked at the time to leave NATO. More than 200 amendments have been presented in the Defense Commission, far from the more than 12,000 presented during the pension reform debate. “The law is very political and the different parties represented in the Assembly have very antagonistic visions of what our Army should do in this political context in Europe,” a close associate of the president’s party told Le Figaro, adding that groups like the left of La France Unsubmissive or National Rally, the party of the far-right Marine Le Pen, who “want to be more offensive.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
