Mont-de-Marsan, FRANCE (Reuters) – President Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday that an envelope of 413 billion euros would be allocated to the budget of the French army for the period 2024-2030, against 295 billion euros between 2019 and 2025.
The 2019-2025 budget had been established to strengthen the capacities of the army after chronic underinvestment in previous decades, the head of state said during a speech at the Mont-de- Marsan consecrated to his vows to the army.
He called the new 2024-2030 budget a “transformation” plan to adapt the military to the possibility of intense conflict, a scenario reinforced by the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“I will request from the national representation that we can devote over the period 2024-2030 a budgetary effort of 400 billion euros, which will make it possible to cover a total of 413 billion euros in military needs”, said Emmanuel Macron.
On average, this would mean increasing the annual military budget by a third.
The president also announced that France would strengthen its capacity to respond to cyberattacks, double the number of the operational reserve and increase the intelligence budget by 60%.
“France has and will have armies ready for the challenges of the century,” he said.
France must be ready for a new era, with an accumulation of threats, added Emmanuel Macron, some of these threats being old wars, others being more unprecedented, “between sophistication and brutal simplicity”.
(Report Clotaire Achi in Mont-de-Marsan and Michel Rose in Paris; written by Ingrid Melander, Blandine Hénault and Kate Entringer for the French version)
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