The aim of the military program bill 2019-2025 is to modernize our armed forces by providing them with all the means they need to perform their missions in the service of France and the French people.
This ambitious bill puts an end to decades of declining defense spending, and meets the imperatives of strategic autonomy, the consolidation of European defense and fiscal sovereignty, and provides the means to achieve the President of the Republic’s of devoting 2% of GDP to defense by 2025.
This text stands out in particular:
-- by the speed with which it was prepared: less than six months elapsed between the publication of the Strategic Review and the presentation of the draft law to the Council of Ministers;
-- by the volume of funding invested and the size of personnel increase: while previous LPMs were marked by cancellations, weapon program delays and cuts of tens of thousands of personnel positions, the draft LPM 2019-2025 devotes 295 billion euros to defense over the next seven years, including 198 billion euros for the years 2019 to 2023 and 6,000 additional positions;
-- by the nature of these funds: the financial trajectory is based solely on budgetary appropriations, and not on exceptional revenue which is necessarily random;
-- by choosing to place at its core the men and women of defense;
-- by choosing to consolidate the current format of our army model, by reinforcing certain strategic capabilities (patrol boats, tankers, medium armor), modernizing all our equipment and investing in the future (innovation, intelligence, strategic cooperation).
Prepared by the Armed Forces Ministry, the bill has been considerably enriched in the National Assembly and the Senate, in committee as well as in plenary session, thanks to a close and constructive work between the executive and the legislature.
Florence Parly welcomes the quality of the parliamentary debates in the National Assembly and in the Senate, and sees this this as proof that the National Representation has been able to measure the importance of this text for the armed forces and for the defense of France. The results of the public votes in both the National Assembly and the Senate also showed the consensus surrounding this military programming bill.
The text must now be examined by a Joint Committee. Faced with the stakes for the defense of France and the future of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly is confident about the ability of both chambers to agree on a common text, with one and only objective that necessarily exceeds partisan debate: the revival of the French armed forces in a constantly changing strategic environment.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: While the new LPM earmarks a significant increase in French defense spending, most of the increase is pushed back to the last three years, well after the term of the current parliament and of President Emmanuel Macron ends in 2022.
The LPM’s full implementation depends on the outcome of the 2022 elections, as a new political majority could decide to amend or even gut it, as has happened to all previous LPMs.
Bringing more of the funding increase forward to 2019-2022 would have secured it, but as always it is easier to push promises to “mañana.”
Click here for our analysis of the 2019-2025 LPM.)
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