Parliamentarians found a compromise on Tuesday June 23 on the additional effort devoted to the armies, 36 billion more by 2030, an envelope considered insufficient by the senatorial right, which however obtained the principle of a faster budgetary effort than in the initial trajectory.
Seven deputies and seven senators agreed in a joint committee (CMP) on a common version of this government text, updating the last military programming law of 2023, according to several parliamentary sources. Their version will still have to be adopted on June 30 in the Senate, then the next day in the Assembly, Emmanuel Macron hoping to promulgate it symbolically before July 14.
The trajectory on which deputies and senators agreed on Tuesday provides, as in the initial text, 436 billion euros by 2030, to reach an annual military budget of 76.3 billion, or 2.5% of GDP.
An envelope validated in the Assembly, but rejected in the upper house. The senatorial right, which demanded an additional windfall of 14 billion euros to deal with potential crises, decided to delete the article to mark its opposition, virtually leaving the text without an investment trajectory. And the Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin then tried to find a compromise with parliamentarians.
Compromise found
The one found on Tuesday plans to accelerate the effort, at a constant envelope. Clearly, part of the expenditure planned for 2029 and 2030 would be brought forward to 2028, representing approximately “1.2 billion euros”, according to the Senate rapporteur, Cédric Perrin (LR), in charge. A compromise which “postpones the problem until later”, regretted the senator, who still believes that we must go beyond 436 billion.
The senators also claim to have obtained in CMP compensation mechanisms for the armies for possible “additional costs linked to external operations” for example, or to the “replacement of equipment and materials lost within the framework of an operational mission”. “We will have to do more and faster but that requires post-presidential national support,” judges his counterpart in the Assembly Jean-Louis Thiériot.
Not binding on paper, the “LPM” must still be validated annually during budgetary discussions in Parliament, and a significant part of the investment choices will therefore fall to the government installed after the presidential election, which could launch its own programming law.
