2023-05-24 09:07:36
Heavy ! After the pension reform and numerous technical or secondary texts, deputies have been considering since Monday the military programming law 2024-2030 (LPM). Heavy because the text will be examined for two weeks. And heavy because it is a question of spending a total of 413 billion euros by 2030, an increase of 40% compared to the previous LPM. “The level of expense you incur is enormous! “, has also launched the communist Fabien Roussel to the government to start the debates, at the beginning of the week.
The total, which combines the military budget for the next seven years, challenges. The deputies who follow the file, but also the specialists, recall first of all that approximately a third of the additional 100 billion are the result of inflation, which is not nothing. All the same: France is preparing to spend 59 billion euros a year for its armed forces, against around 14 billion euros at the end of the 1990s. The Macronist majority is also proud to double this budget military in 2030 compared to when he came to power in 2017.
Few naive
Is this increase, from LPM to LPM, inevitable? “Let’s hope not, because we all want a world of peace! Says the chairman of the Defense Committee, Thomas Gassilloud (Renaissance). But we have to adapt to the risk: there is a savagery of the world and profound technological changes, we are obliged to invest to stay on top. “Since the wave of attacks in 2015, but especially since the war in Ukraine, “we are in a time of strategic changes, it is clear and clear, slice Jean-Pierre Maulny, deputy director of Iris. Budgets had been falling steadily since the end of the Cold War; now they are increasing, everywhere in Europe, and sometimes more strongly than in France. »
“Some think that we spend too much, which seems dangerous or naive to me”, defended the Minister of the Armed Forces on Monday, Sebastien Lecornu. Except that on the opposition benches, there are not many people to deny that the “peace dividends”, that is to say the reduction in defense budgets after the Cold War, are over. In the end, there should be few votes against the text. On the right, we consider that this LPM “is not a historical law, but a reasonable law. “. And even on the left! Socialist Anna Pic stresses in particular that the annual increases are similar to the previous LPM and wants to keep the promise made to NATO partners, that is to say to reach 2% of GDP in military spending.
Autonomy is expensive
Admittedly, the Communists seem more reassembled, but the rebellious Aurélien Saintoul does not believe today credible a proposal without a sharp increase in military budgets: “There is not really an alternative. If we are not in a policy of greatness, it is necessarily relegation ”. The rebels, who presented a very detailed counter-proposal, on the other hand defend the fact that their vision of planning would allow for more effective spending: “In this case, you have not only military spending but dual, c ie at the service of the military and the civilian, explains the deputy of Hauts-de-Seine. Somehow, without a compass, you’re going straight. And there, there is a headlong rush of expenditure. »
What is expensive for France is its strategic autonomy. “This means that we manufacture our weapons ourselves, when others often buy ‘off the shelf’, explains Jean-Pierre Maulny. So we have major arms programs over thirty or forty years, which means that we have fairly rigid military spending. And there is “a worrying trend” in rising prices, excluding inflation: “Soon, for 413 billion, you will buy two tanks!” Saintoul quipped. For what ? Because we tend to go for the best technological bidder, “in a mercantile approach to sell them to countries with an unlimited budget, like Saudi Arabia”. And this without France really needing it for her. Jean-Pierre Maulny wants to believe that the awareness of the General Staff on this question is real.
Transparency
Ecologists also see some leeway: for example on the modernization of nuclear deterrence, which represents an important part of the new LPM. The president of the group, Cyrielle Châtelain, believes that France should “engage in diplomatic actions for nuclear disarmament”. The MP for Isère would also like us to focus more on European defense to gain in efficiency: “The real solution is the pooling of European defense resources, rather than separate and uncoordinated budget increases. “A credible objective according to Jean-Pierre Maulny, even if it “must not be done at any price”.
413 billion euros by 2030, this is what, once again, strikes the spirits. But Jean-Pierre Maulny, who does not see this LPM as a revolution, assures him: “The army is now clearly a priority, but not the first. There is a trade-off with other public policies. It is true that on a global scale, the army represents only 3% of annual public expenditure. By way of comparison, education represents 9.5% of this same expenditure, if we are to believe the government website “En avoir pour mes taxes”. PS MP for Cherbourg Anna Pic concludes by inviting to compensate for this sharp increase in military spending with greater transparency: “When we put such sums, in the current context of inflation, the French men and women must know why it is necessary. »
#billion #euros #army #budget #doomed #increase #constantly