The ministry of the Armed forces is well in the sights of Bercy. After an interlude of five years when the former minister of Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian has successfully defended its budget, the ministry of Economy is in income since the beginning of the year, the charge to compel the ministry of the Armed forces have to make savings. After the freeze of € 2.7 billion of credits before the arrival of the government of Philip as revealed by The Tribune, Bercy has recently forwarded to the prime minister a proposal to reduce from 850 million euros in the defence budget in 2017, according to our information. The blog Secret Defense had shown this amount Thursday. So far, the trade-offs have not yet been made.
Trade-offs among Macron?
The government promised Thursday to clarify within fifteen days of the turn of the screw intended to contain the public deficit to 3% in 2017. “I have proposed to the Prime minister a number of economies,” and he “will make decisions in the week,” announced the minister of the public Accounts Gérald Darmanin, recalling that Bercy had to find 4 to 5 billion euros to meet in 2017 the european fiscal rules. “All ministers are in solidarity, ( … ), therefore there will be no logical one against the other,” he recalled at the beginning of June.
“No ministry, no operator, no niche tax will not be sanctuarisé. Everywhere, we hunt the spending ineffective, and the dusting of credits”, confirmed Tuesday the Prime minister Édouard Philippe, during his general policy speech. If the ministry of the Armed forces was to be hit by budget savings, the promise of Emmanuel Macron, as relayed by Edward Philippe, would not be ultimately that of the… promises, which are binding only on those who listen to them while the armies are demanding more ways to ensure their missions in the face of terrorist threats.
In November 2015, just after the attacks, Hollande had rightly seen in front of the senators and members of the French parliament, gathered in Congress at the palace of Versailles that “the covenant of security outweighs the budgetary stability pact of the european”. Emmanuel Macron, who will have to arbitrate between Bercy and the Hotel de Brienne, will he be the president that will change this dogma?
Florence Parly at the front
The minister for the Armed forces, Florence Parly, for his part, assured on Friday in Toulon, france that it would “put all its efforts in the service of a progression to make” the goal of a defense budget to 2% of GDP in 2025. “The budget discussions are ongoing,” she said during a visit to the units of the Navy, on the basis of Toulon. “It is a commitment of the president of the Republic, reiterated several times,” she recalled, referring to the target of 2%, confirmed by the Prime minister in his general policy speech.
At the end of June, the minister, who has succeeded to Sylvie Goulard, had already announced that France would undertake a review of strategic issues by the autumn in order to adapt its military needs to the new threats and to focus the effort of defence to 2% of GDP by 2025. The strategic review will be presented in the Council of defense in October and then to Parliament in November in order to adopt the new law on military programming (2019-2025) in the first half of 2018.
Contradictory discourses?
But what exactly Edward Philip ? Because between her desire to remain in the nails of the stability pact and its desire to protect the French, it is today the large gap. Him that Tuesday felt that “the threat is everywhere, diffuse, not a month goes by that the projects are not stale, or of the acts to be prevented”. He even recorded “more than 200 killed on our soil, hundreds of wounded”.
“I want to pay tribute to all those that we see, police officers, gendarmes, the military, the operation Sentinel ensure that each day to our safety, to those who fight on the theater of operations, the Sahel, or the Levant, and to all those that we don’t see and that we’ll never know, our soldiers of the shadow we can be proud of, many have fallen in service of our freedom.
All these military, Édouard Philippe promised to give them “the means to defend” France “as if there is engaged the president of the Republic a law on military programming”, which will be adopted in 2018. This law of military programming (LPM), will be the effort of spending 2% of GDP by 2025 and “will enable France to fight on all fronts”. This effort is already passing through a very good execution of the budget in 2017…
