PARIS (AP) — French on Sunday announced 6.5 billion euros ($7.6 billion) in extra military spending in the next two years because of new and unprecedented threats, ranging from Russia to nuclear proliferation, terrorists and online attacks.
The French leader laid out the spending plans in a sweeping speech calling for intensified efforts to protect Europe, and 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 annual 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 greater defense spending, while left-wing parties accuse the government of sacrificing hard-won social welfare benefits for military spending.
Europe is in danger because of and wars in the Middle East, and 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 start a ″strategic dialogue″ with European partners about the role that the French nuclear arsenal could play 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 make an announcement about Russia on Monday, and the head of NATO is traveling to Washington for two days of talks. Trump last week announced plans to that they can then pass on to Ukraine, which has been struggling to repel massive and complex Russian air assaults.
French Defense Minister 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?”
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