"Model against model": the deputies started Monday afternoon the examination of the bill programming a sharp increase in the budget of the armies, presidential camp and oppositions starting a battle of doctrines and figures which must last two weeks.
With 413 billion euros over seven years (2024-2030), the envelope of this new Military Programming Law (LPM) is in clear progression compared to the previous one (295 billion for 2019-2025), but the opposition denounces announcement effects.
Opening the exchanges, the Minister for the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu supported a text which will allow "technological leaps (...) strategic or tactical" and called on parliamentarians to debate "model against model".
The stated objective is to renovate equipment, modernize nuclear deterrence, improve the treatment of troops, renew equipment but also to invest in cyber, space and control of the seabed. Thirty billion must be used to cover inflation.
The debates on Monday evening took the deputies to NATO, and France's objective, as a member state, of reaching 2% of GDP devoted to the national defense effort. The initial text planned to achieve this by 2025, but the government revised the deadline to 2027 in committee, citing new forecasts for the evolution of GDP.
Communists and rebels proposed to abandon this criterion. The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Jean-Louis Bourlanges (MoDem), suggested reintroducing the 2025 target, so as not to send a "bad signal".
Recognizing that this indicator "has a sometimes virtual character", the minister however opposed an unfavorable opinion, and their amendments were rejected.
The executive invoked the accelerated procedure on its text (one reading before each chamber), hoping to achieve final adoption before July 14. To pass the obstacle of the first reading in the Assembly, the Minister met with several opposition groups.
The presidential camp hopes to convince some of the LR deputies, even some socialists. In the hemicycle Jean-Louis Thiériot (LR) hailed a "major effort", in the absence of a "historic law". He had voted for the LPM in committee in a "personal capacity".
The boss of LR deputies Olivier Marleix has been very critical of the text in recent weeks, accusing the government in particular, like many opposition deputies, of having programmed the largest budget increases after 2027, that is - that is to say after the second Macron five-year term.
The oppositions also denounce an uncertainty over 13.3 billion euros which must come from extra-budgetary resources, but the LRs obtained the adoption in committee of an amendment aimed at securing them more.
Moreover, this LPM, despite sharply rising credits, will lead to a delay in the delivery of several major equipment (Scorpion armored vehicles, Rafale aircraft, defense and intervention frigates, etc.), which worries the opposition.
Anna Pic (PS) criticized "an LPM which has nothing to do with history". Environmentalists and communists, who advocate a multilateral exit from nuclear deterrence and are opposed to the planned construction of a new aircraft carrier, should not support the text.
The rebels presented a counter-project shortly before the session. They plead like the PCF for an exit from NATO's integrated command and for a questioning of the "privileged partnership" with Germany.
On the RN side, the group president Marine Le Pen said she was approaching the debate "in a constructive spirit". However, she reprimanded a "multilateralist profession of faith", deeming "essential to put in place sovereign alternatives" to certain European or Franco-German military programs.
In a letter consulted by AFP on Monday, the minister also announced an additional 10 billion euros to better pay the military, and to improve their index grids, from 2023 for rank troops and non-commissioned officers.
05/23/2023 01:14:45 - Paris (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
