French MPs approve six-year €413bn military budget bill

The French National Assembly approved a €413 billion military budget bill for 2024-2030 at first reading on Wednesday, with extra lines of credit for nuclear and ammunition to Ukraine.

Following days of uncertainty, the military budget bill was broadly approved with 408 votes in favour and 87 votes against. While President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, the right-wing Les Républicains and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party unanimously backed the bill, the left-wing NUPES coalition remained divided.

After 90 hours of “calm and constructive” debates, the bill was adopted “in support of our army”, Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu tweeted.

The new budget for 2024-2030 is at a historic €413 billion, with the annual budget set to increase annually to reach €68.9 billion by 2030 – a huge 40% boost compared to the €295 billion in military spending agreed to for 2019 to 2025.

Nuclear deterrence also benefits from a €50-billion investment hike through the renewal of naval and air capacities. Lawmakers also approve similar budget hikes for intelligence, cyber defence, drones and space surveillance.

Though not technically included in the budget, the equipment supplied to Ukraine will see a further €16 billion go into renewing ammunition stocks.

The vote in the National Assembly demonstrated a clear rift within the left-wing alliance NUPES.

While Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left-wing La France Insoumise party (LFI) and the Communist Party opposed it, two other parties of the alliance, the Greens and the Socialists, abstained.

LFI’s opposition vote came as no surprise as it had published a counter-proposal, in which it accuses the government of adopting a “Western” approach to world conflicts and calls for “an independent military policy outside NATO for peace” instead. In December 2021, LFI, a traditionally NATO-sceptic party, even presented a bill that would have France leave NATO altogether.

The bill will now be passed on to the Senate, and the government hopes to enact the law before the highly symbolic Bastille Day on 14 July.

(Davide Basso, Theo Bourgery-Gonse | EURACTIV.fr)