‘Multiple threats’: Macron raises France’s military budget 40%

The spending spree is needed to ensure “our freedom, our security, our prosperity, our place in the world”, said Macron.

The budget for the period will stand at 413 billion euros ($447bn), up from 295 billion euros ($320bn) in 2019-2025, which means by 2030 France’s military budget would have doubled since he took power in 2017.

“As war is changing France has and will have armies ready for the perils of the century,” said Macron, speaking at the Mont-de-Marsan airbase in southwestern France. “We need to be one war ahead.”

The money would notably go to modernising France’s nuclear arsenal.

“Nuclear deterrence is an element that makes France different from other countries in Europe. We see anew, in analysing the war in Ukraine, its vital importance,” he said.

France will invest massively in drones and military intelligence, areas where French officials have said recent conflicts exposed gaps, and the military should pivot towards a strategy of high-intensity conflict.

Macron has stepped up supplies since the middle of last year, sending Caesar truck-mounted howitzers and promising AMX-10 RC tank destroyers, but French officials have said operations in Africa and years of chronic under-investment have made it impossible to do more immediately.

Macron did not announce new support for Ukraine, but said France had to be ready for a new era with an accumulation of threats. Some were old wars, others more unprecedented, “between sophistication and brutal simplicity”, he said.