France is doubling the military financing plan for 2024–2030 to be paid by the savings from pension reform. No wonder why the French are taking to the streets in mass protest.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced the allocation of €400 billion, an astronomical amount by the standards of the country, for military spending. In fact, the situation with the distribution of funds is much more multifaceted. Moreover, an analysis of the plans of the French army shows that a sharp increase in spending was planned for a long time but was not advertised.
€400 billion is not a one-time allocation but Macron’s personal demands to parliament about the draconian military budget for 2024–2030, which will be published in the summer of 2023. The previous army funding program was adopted for the period 2019–2025.
From 2019 to 2022, Paris annually increased military spending by the same amount of €1.7 billion. And only in 2023 began a sharp increase in spending ,which is around $ 3 billion. The bottom line is that the military program for 2019–2025 initially assumed an allocation of € 295 billion, which means that a sharp increase in spending in 2024 and 2025 was planned. That is, back in 2018, France intended to build up its armed forces by the beginning of the 2020s.
Calculations show that in 2024–2030, the country will progressively increase military spending by equal amounts, as in 2019–2022.But this time we will be talking about an annual increase of €3 billion, not €1.7 billion. Thus, Macron will fulfil his promise to increase France’s military allocations by two times by 2030 compared to 2017—from €32.3 billion to €66 billion.
Such serious cost estimates require funding sources. The Macron administration followed a simple path and announced an increase in the retirement age in the country, which caused outrage and unrest among the population. The Montaigne think tank estimates that the government’s cumulative savings from raising the retirement age from 62 to 65 will amount to €18 billion by 2032. If in 2023 Russia chose the “social spending is paramount” approach, then the opposite situation turned out with France—the appetites of the military-industrial complex and generals are above all.
