President Emmanuel Macron announced in July that France would raise its defense budget to €64bn ($74bn) within 18 months. This was part of a plan to inject another €36bn into defense by 2030. The first part of this program was authorized in February.
This ambitious proposal would aid France’s effort to reach the NATO-wide goal of spending 3.5% of GDP on hard defense by 2035. But it is still unclear where Macron will find the necessary funds and whether he will succeed before leaving office in May 2027.
Like the UK, France faces a serious dilemma. The leaders of both countries acknowledge that the world has become far more dangerous and that the peacetime armed forces are inadequate to meet the threat.
But both are heavily indebted, face mounting welfare demands, and are spending a large chunk of their defense budgets on renewing their hugely expensive, independent, submarine-based nuclear deterrents.
Macron has an additional problem. With no parliamentary majority in the National Assembly and a fractious opposition, his party will struggle to revise the national budget in order to raise the extra defense funds.
France’s debt hovered around 113% of GDP in 2024 — the third highest in the European Union. In July, Macron talked about the rising security risks facing the country and assured the public that rearmament would not increase the national debt. The following day, Prime Minister François Bayrou laid out how this would be achieved, mainly through spending cuts and the abolition of two national holidays. Many questioned the feasibility of such an approach in a deadlocked National Assembly, and indeed Bayrou was soon forced to resign.
Macron is clear about the threat amid counter “rising global instability” and a “widening range of threats, from Russia and nuclear proliferation to terrorism and cyberattacks”.
Nuclear weapons spending is considerable. Just to keep French nuclear missile submarines operational costs the country nearly €4bn annually. That’s around 13% of the defense budget.
France now plans to “increase the size of its nuclear arsenal”, Macron announced on March 2. It already maintains the world’s fourth-largest arsenal, with around 290 warheads (about one-tenth the size of both the US and Russia’s), and is the only nuclear power in the European Union now that the UK has left.
Since France last increased its nuclear arsenal in 1992, Macron’s announcement signals that in today’s tense political climate, he is seeking to send a strategic message about France’s strength and leadership in Europe and beyond.
Perhaps equally significant is Macron’s willingness to cooperate with other European powers, on nuclear issues, a current concern for non-nuclear powers such as Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. Macron announced that he would allow France, for the first time, “to temporarily deploy its nuclear-armed aircraft to European allies.”
With Europe widely viewing the US as less dependable for military protection, Macron’s move may be seen as an opportunity for European-level cooperation and greater independence from the US. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz had “opened the door to German forces operating with French and British nuclear weapons,” a significant change given Germany’s traditional wariness of a wider European security strategy.
But French ambition and French spending do not always accord.
It is Germany that is the top spender for both military and financial assistance to Ukraine, at approximately €20bn and €1.4bn, respectively, by the end of 2025. That compares to France’s contribution of €6bn in military aid and just under €800m in financial aid, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. (The French authorities argue these figures are underestimates and that a number of weapons supplied are not accounted for.)
But the orders of magnitude are difficult to dispute, and there is a similar story for overall defense spending. Since Merz’s government took power last year, it has released a huge wave of security spending, which will take Germany to around 3.5% of GDP by 2029-30, far more than France or the UK (Germany is notably less indebted than its two big neighbors).
The biggest roadblock in the way of Macron’s grand plans remains his opponents within his own country.
Even so, his new Prime Minister since September, Sébastien Lecornu, has made progress in pushing a budget through despite the opposition. His more conciliatory budget plan involved a greater willingness to negotiate and compromise than his predecessors. After Bayrou’s departure, Lecornu, former armed forces minister and a strong supporter of Ukraine, was able to “secure the support of Socialist lawmakers through costly but targeted concessions” while bringing in approximately €7bn through higher taxes on some businesses. The plan will cut France’s deficit slightly to 5% of GDP in 2026 from 5.4%.
The great unknown is the outcome of the 2027 presidential election, which could trigger early legislative elections. A rising French defense budget is very far from assured.
Nicole Monette is a CEPA Editorial Intern and a graduate of New York University with master’s degrees in journalism and European & Mediterranean Studies.
CEPA Editorial staff also contributed to this article.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Ukraine 2036
How Today’s Investments Will Shape Tomorrow’s Security
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
