The initial project, adopted at the beginning of 2024, concerned a budget of 400 billion euros to finance the 2024-2030 military programming law. Two and a half years later, the deputies are preparing to approve, this Tuesday, an addition of 36 billion euros to this amount, in a context marked by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and disengagement of the United States.
In the hemicycle of the National Assembly, the deputies very little amended the bill voted by the defense committee at the end of April, leaving little doubt as to its adoption. The socialists then voted in favor and the National Rally abstained.
This budgetary trajectory must, however, be validated each year during the debate on the State budget. If it does not plan to modify the format of the armies (210,000 active military personnel, 225 combat aircraft, 15 first-rate frigates), the project places emphasis on investment positions deemed necessary. Starting with ammunition, with more missiles and shells, as well as drones.
Concerns about LFI and ecologists
In addition to the investment component, the bill brings several new features. On Monday, deputies adopted the most sensitive article of the text. It provides for a new exceptional regime that can be triggered “on all or part of the national territory, by decree in the Council of Ministers in the event of a serious and current threat”. “We are not affecting individual freedoms,” insisted the Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin. A vision that LFI and environmentalists do not share. “The trigger criteria are far too vague,” says Bastien Lachaud (LFI). “Such a serious decision which makes it possible to deviate from common law and increase the powers of the executive must necessarily pass before Parliament”.
The text also provides for allowing certain private operators, including airports, to use devices for jamming or neutralizing drones and, above all, to delegate this task under conditions to private subcontractors. One way to respond to the various incursions on sensitive sites in recent years.
Our file on Defense
Several measures concern youth, including the transformation of Defense and Citizenship Day into Mobilization Day, refocused on military issues. The bill is scheduled for the Senate’s agenda from June 2.
