As war rages in Europe's 'neighborhood', France asserts that 'Europeans have to step up' militarily

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00:00 Let's get some more analysis and we can speak now to Gesine Weber who is a research analyst at the

00:04 Paris office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Thank you very much indeed for

00:08 speaking to us. I mean what do you see as being the main reasons for this increase in military

00:13 spending here in France? So basically there are several reasons I think that we see but

00:19 overall it can be understood as an adaptation to the current geopolitical climate. This is on

00:26 one hand of course Russia's war against Ukraine but on the other hand also mounting tensions

00:33 between the US and China and the fact that the US is increasingly focusing on its competition

00:40 with China and might on the medium to long term be less available to take care of security

00:48 challenges in the European neighborhood. So basically France sees that Europeans have to

00:55 step up in its security, have to take responsibility in its neighborhood and this is also what we see

01:02 in this new budget proposal. But furthermore this is also what was already mentioned in the

01:09 contribution before here. It is also about getting the French army to a state where it is able to

01:18 fight in high intensity warfare because what the French army has been doing over the last 10 to 20

01:26 years was mostly counter-terrorism. Whereas for example nuclear deterrence and so on has always

01:33 been part of the French strategy but it is today more important than it was for example in the

01:41 mid of the 2000s. So in short I mean France would be vulnerable if it didn't go down this road and

01:49 therefore it's not really an option whether or not it opts to up the spending on military

01:56 expenditure. I wouldn't go so far to say that France would be vulnerable but indeed it would

02:05 be very complicated to hit the diversity of the geo-strategic and geopolitical challenges

02:10 that France and all of Europe will be facing in the next years. We also see for example that

02:16 France is massively going to invest in exactly military in contested spaces and stepping up

02:26 its capacities there. That means for example submarine, that means cyber, that means outer

02:33 space because we see an increasing militarization and increasing risk of conflict also in these

02:40 spaces and that is something that the current French army just as other European armies

02:47 still need to prepare for a bit more. Are other European countries making decisions like this as

02:55 well? I mean France isn't alone is it in deciding to increase military spend by 3 to 4 billion a

03:01 year. How does France compare to say a country of a sizable population just across the channel

03:08 and I'm talking about the UK? We see basically in both countries that there is a willingness to do

03:14 more in security and defense and we also see when it comes to the broader strategies that the UK

03:24 and France look pretty similar. Both of them acknowledge the vital importance of the Indo-Pacific

03:30 for European security as well, also for particularly also for economic security

03:37 but for France we must not forget that the country also has for example overseas territories but

03:44 yes indeed French and British security and defense policy and strategy are getting closer to each

03:53 other and we also see that in the realm of cooperation between both of them which has for

03:58 example since the Franco-British summit in March leveled up so we see a lot of good developments

04:05 here and maybe to look a bit at the broader European picture overall an increase of defense

04:11 budgets in Europe is not something extraordinary that's really something that we see in almost all

04:19 EU countries and when we just look at the numbers then we can also say that time was up for that.

04:26 NATO members already agreed several years ago that member states actually wanted to spend two percent

04:34 of their GDPs on defense spending but in 2022 only seven countries according to NATO numbers

04:44 have hit that benchmark and France for example was not among them so here it's more like leveling up

04:51 to what France is supposed to do to hit its alliance commitments but also to assume its

05:00 role as a leader in European security and defense. Okay well thank you very much for taking the time

05:06 to speak to us Justine Weber at the German Marshall Fund of the US. Thank you very much

05:10 indeed for your time. Thank you.

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