The Senate votes this Tuesday, June 9, to update the French military programming law (LPM) 2024-2030. The text should be approved, but its financial aspect was rejected by the right, which demands an additional 14 billion euros compared to the 436 billion proposed by the government.
The military programming law (LPM) at the Senators’ table. This Tuesday, June 9, the Senate is preparing to vote to increase France’s defense effort by 2030 in the context of international conflicts, but the precise amount of the budgetary increase for the armed forces continues to divide the political class.
How many billions more for the French armies by the end of the decade? The debate, thorny in a period of budgetary scarcity, is still not resolved.
The government, for its part, is proposing to allocate an additional 36 billion euros to defense by the end of the decade. Or a total of 436 billion over the period 2024-2030.
A “considerable” and “realistic” effort
An effort “considérable”, according to the Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin, but above all “realiste”: he is “the fruit of arbitrations between the needs of our armies […] and the capacity of public finances to respond to them”she defended before the Senate.
But the senatorial right, the first group in the chamber, does not see it that way, demanding an additional windfall of 14 billion euros to deal with potential crises.
This divergence led to the outright rejection by the Senate of the article setting the budgetary trajectory of the LPM, a setback for the executive which hopes to see this text completed before the symbolic date of July 14.
A text without a fixed budgetary trajectory
It is therefore a shaky text, deprived of its financial aspect, which is submitted to the solemn vote of the Senate this Tuesday. It should still be comfortably adopted, with most groups considering supporting it, according to several parliamentary sources.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has already called on Parliament to “find a solution” whoever “sustainable” for public finances.
“We want to see the negotiation through to the end,” warns Senator Cédric Perrin, who is leading the examination of this text for Les Républicains and intends to obtain a budgetary extension in the final text.
The discussions still promise to be complex for the government, which risks losing the support of the Socialist Party if it gives too many pledges to the right.
A final meeting before summer
The elected representatives of the two chambers will then meet during a joint joint committee (CMP) before the end of the month, a crucial conciliation meeting between deputies and senators. It is during this conclave of 14 parliamentarians that the final amount of the budgetary effort for the armies will be negotiated.
The military programming law, which sets the main orientations and means of the French armies, is however not binding on the government, the army budget having to be voted on each year in Parliament in the finance bill.
