Macron accelerates French military buildup as NATO races to rearm
The announcement follows European nations' efforts to meet Trump's demands for a NATO 3.0 militarized alliance
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on 13 July that France will raise its defense budget to $74.8 billion by 2027, three years ahead of the original 2030 target, doubling French military spending since he took office in 2017.
“I asked that we accelerate this defense effort further and set the objective of bringing forward to 2027 the ambition initially planned for 2030 of reaching a budget of €64 billion for our armed forces,” Macron said in his address to the army ahead of Bastille Day celebrations.
He added that “over 10 years, we will have doubled the defense budget. We have met that commitment every year, down to the last euro, and it will be achieved.”
Macron said France had already fulfilled its earlier pledge to raise defense spending to two percent of GDP by 2025, arguing that this early rearmament had strengthened the armed forces before a number of crises unfolded, including the Ukraine war, instability in the Sahel, and the eruption of conflicts in West Asia.
The French president declared that the launch of a “war economy” was not enough and called for further public and private investment in the defense sector.
He also renewed his push for deeper European defense cooperation, saying Europe was becoming a power capable of taking greater responsibility for its own security.
Macron's declaration comes as European nations scramble to meet US President Donald Trump's demands for a militarized alliance reshaped under NATO 3.0.
Washington is pursuing two key objectives, those being raising members' military spending to five percent of GDP, and the second constructing a new arms production chain in which the US retains control over core components while distributing subcomponent production across allies.
According to a Bloomberg report, European NATO nations are sharply increasing defense spending to close critical security gaps and counter the rising threat from Russia.
Part of the aim is to shift reliance away from US suppliers toward an ambitious goal of sourcing 60 percent of that equipment procurement from within the EU by 2035.
However, the report notes that Europe’s ambition is currently outrunning its industrial capacity. While the region can readily build its own ships and tanks, it still lags in high-tech areas like long-range missiles and advanced surveillance – meaning US firms will likely remain dominant suppliers in the near term.