The far-right candidate Eric Zemmour proposed, Thursday, February 17, to increase the defense budget by nearly 30 billion euros by 2030, if he is elected President of the Republic. “We will increase by 3.6 billion per year to reach 70 billion in 2030”, explained the leader of the Reconquest party! in a Parisian hotel, while the defense budget is planned at 41 billion euros in 2022.
“It will be progressive, we will finance it either by savings on other sectors or by choices that we will make”, said Mr. Zemmour to the press, who asked him regarding how to finance this increase of 29 billion euros. The candidate’s team has made a commitment to Agence France-Presse to communicate an overall and more precise estimate of the ways of financing its program by ” a few weeks “.
Transition to twenty frigates and eight nuclear attack submarines
According to the candidate, the current army is “sample, with barely 100 guns, incomplete and cut to the smallest extent like an expeditionary force”. She “does not have the necessary mass to last in a high intensity conflict, both human and material”he believes. “As soon as the presidential election is over, I will launch a new strategic review with a view to preparing the vote at the end of 2022 of a new military programming law 2023-2030”said Eric Zemmour.
He wants the army to be able “to dispose” from a total of “300 fighter jets by 2040”, “to eventually own two aircraft carriers, twenty frigates and eight nuclear attack submarines” and wear “the land task force to 100,000 men by 2027”. He plans to rename the current ministry to “Ministry of Armies and Defense Industry”to emphasize the role of French industry.
About the crisis around Ukraine, Eric Zemmour criticized “the American instrumentalization of the situation” and the strategy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). “I want a normalized and peaceful relationship with Russia, without complacency or unnecessary provocation. For me, things are clear: the extension of NATO to the gates of Russia has no justification for the security of Europe and I am resolutely opposed to it. The Russians are neither our allies nor our enemies.insisted the candidate, who counts “withdraw France from NATO’s integrated military command”.