France: Macron Calls for Increase in Arms Production

In early January, Emmanuel Macron sounded the alarm to defense industry leaders: if production rates do not increase in France, the country will “seek European solutions if they are faster or more effective.” Since 2022 and the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the President of the Republic has been calling for the establishment of a war economy, but it is struggling to materialize.

To better understand the obstacles to this rearmament, the Ministry of Armed Forces has just established a center of excellence in Toulouse with a budget of €1.93 million until 2030.

An Understudied Field

Named Aerods (for Aerospace, Defense, and Social Sciences), this center will rely on the expertise of around fifteen researchers from the University of Toulouse-Capitole, in partnership with Onera, Isae-Supaero, and industry players in the defense sector like Airbus Defence and Space.

“Defense policies in general, and armament policies in particular, are understudied in France and rarely analyzed in detail despite being crucial. The ambition of this center is to dissect all these constraints (legal, economic, industrial, and political) that weigh on public and private actors,” said Florent Pouponneau, director of the center of excellence and political science lecturer at the University of Toulouse-Capitole.

Several research avenues will be explored. “Political will for rearmament first faces resistance related to the high financial cost of programs and the challenges of cooperation between numerous public and private actors. There are also resistances linked to organizational inertia, fragmentation of the industrial base, complexity of national, European, and international regulations, and the challenges of evaluating investments made,” the researcher listed.

Last June, the President of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Cédric Perrin, expressed concern in La Tribune: “There is no funding, there are no orders” from the government. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Armed Forces is urging industry players to produce more and faster.