PARIS — France will boost defense spending to €64 billion in 2027, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday, without saying where the money will come from.
“To be free in this world you must be feared, to be feared you must be powerful,” he told an audience of top military brass in the gardens of the French defense ministry.
“While we had planned to double the defense budget by 2030, we will double it by 2027. There will be €64 billion for defense in 2027, that’s twice more than in 2017. It’s a new, historic and proportionate effort,” he added.
Macron’s speech on the armed forces — which is a French tradition ahead of the July 14 Bastille Day military parade — comes on the heels of last month’s NATO summit, where allies committed to boosting core defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035. Europe’s NATO member countries are looking to deter an expansionist Russia while preparing for reduced American military involvement on the continent.
The French president had first hinted back in January that France would need to increase military spending by more than the €3 billion spending rises already foreseen for 2026 and 2027 in the country’s seven-year non-binding military planning law.
To prepare the public for the spending increases in the context of the country’s strained public finances, Macron asked the chief of the defense staff, General Thierry Burkhard, to disclose the threats facing France on Friday — mainly from Russia.
The new money will not be borrowed but will be generated through “more activity and more production,” Macron said on Sunday, adding that Prime Minister François Bayrou will lay out the details when he presents the main lines of France’s 2026 budget on Tuesday.
While Bayrou is expected to come up with €40 billion in overall spending cuts, the French defense budget will increase by €3.5 billion in 2026 and €3 billion in 2027, Macron told his audience. An updated military planning law will be presented in the fall, with aims including increasing drone and munitions stocks (especially loitering munitions such as suicide drones); air defense; and electronic warfare.
The French president’s speech came ahead of an update of the country’s National Strategic Review, which will be released later this week. It is expected to say that the future of the continent will be determined by “the continued, durable Russian threat on Europe’s borders.”
Macron, who has criticized the trade war U.S. President Donald Trump launched against the EU this year, urged European countries to “act together, produce together, buy together” when it comes to weaponry. He announced that France and Germany will hold a joint Defense and Security Council in late August at which “new decisions will have to be made.”
He has also tasked Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu and Burkhard with speaking with those European nations interested in engaging in a strategic dialogue on France’s nuclear weapons, and will deliver a speech on France’s nuclear doctrine by the end of the year.
“In the age of predators, no one can remain motionless. We have a lead now, but tomorrow, at the same pace, we will be overtaken,” Macron told the audience.
The post Macron promises billions more for French defense budget appeared first on Politico.
