Defense: the National Assembly validates a budget increase of 36 billion euros by 2030 for the French armies

It provides for an additional 36 billion euros compared to the last programming law (2023), or 436 billion in budgetary investments over the period 2024-2030. The deputies of the National Rally and the Socialist Party abstained, and La France insoumise voted against the article. Some 13.3 billion additional resources are supposed to be added to the effort, coming from real estate revenues or income from the army health service for example.

“Intensify our rearmament effort”

For Catherine Vautrin, Minister of the Armed Forces, the text reflects the “need to accelerate, to densify our rearmament effort”, with “feedback” from “Ukraine and the Near and Middle East”, particularly on the importance of stocks of missiles and shells, or on the predominant place of drones. Thus, the new roadmap provides, for example, 8.5 billion more for munitions (26 billion over the entire period), or two additional billion for drones (8.4 billion over the period).

According to this trajectory, the annual military budget would then be 76.3 billion in 2030, or 2.5% of GDP. However, the path drawn must still be validated each year when the state budget is adopted, and Parliament can therefore deviate from it. In addition, the 2027 presidential election is likely to reshuffle the cards. Laurent Jacobelli, deputy of the National Rally, thus accused Emmanuel Macron of wanting to “force the hand” of the future resident of the Élysée, who in any case “will redo a programming law” corresponding to his program.

Bastien Lachaud, deputy for La France insoumise, criticized the absence of new tax resources, particularly on high incomes, to finance the announced effort, judging that it would have repercussions as it stands on social or public service expenditure: “How do you expect the French to accept so much (military) expenses when you explain to them that there is no money for the rest.”

Supervision of publications

The deputies spent almost the entire week debating a report annexed to the bill, a sort of road map supposed to direct investments, without normative value. On Thursday, however, the deputies approved concrete measures, such as regulating the publication of works, in particular books, by intelligence agents and ex-agents. A measure aimed at avoiding the disclosure of elements that could endanger operations or other agents. The competent minister could control before publication of the “works of the mind” of members of certain services (DGSE, DGSI, DRM, DRSD, DNRED, TRACFIN), under penalty of criminal sanctions, and up to ten years after the termination of an agent’s functions.

Against his advice, the deputies set a deadline of two months for the government to oppose the publication, the absence of a response being equivalent to authorization. Jérémie Iordanoff, environmentalist MP, and Aurélien Saintoul, MP for La France insoumise, were concerned about a disproportionate attack on freedom of expression, or even a questioning of the protection of whistleblowers. The Assembly also approved an article expanding the possibility for intelligence to use algorithms, to track and exploit connection data on the web, in particular “for national defense” and against “organized crime” and trafficking of narcotics or weapons.