French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday on Fox News that he plans to increase the country’s defense spending as a NATO member, adding that President Donald Trump’s request was correct.
Since Trump’s first term, he has called on France and other NATO allies to meet defense spending requirements, saying during his 2024 campaign that he wouldn’t protect countries that didn’t pay their share. On “Special Report with Bret Baier,” the Fox host said that France’s defense spending was roughly 2%, asking if Macron would be boosting it “in this environment.”
“So first, since I was elected in 2017, I passed two laws of planification. At the end of these two laws, we would have doubled our budget in France. As you mentioned, we are at 2%. We have to do much more. Your president is right,” Macron said.
“But it’s a tough economic environment in France — political environment. Your coalition is frayed,” Baier said.
In early June 2024, Macron surprised the country by calling for a snap election following a defeat from the conservative National Rally (RN) party led by Jordan Bardella in the European Parliament elections, CNBC News reported. Following the snap election, Macon later denied the country’s left-wing New Popular Front (NPF) coalition a chance to form a government, creating a divide with the group.
Macron pushed back on Baier, saying that the move to increase defense spending would be driven by Russia’s threat.
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“Yes, but what I did, and this is my job, is to convince the majority of French people and the majority of parties to step up our efforts. It’s not because you ask us to do so and have more burden sharing. This is our interest. And why?” Macron asked.
“This is important, and this is something you have to realize as well. Because Russia is still a threat. Russia spends 10% of its GDP in defense. It’s close to us, and Russia is aggressive vis-à-vis the Europeans. We have, every week, cyber attacks. We had terrorist attacks,” Macron said. “They have a sort of hybrid war vis-à-vis the Europeans. So we have to step up our expenditure.”
With Trump entering office in January, the president pushed to fulfill his campaign vow of ending international wars, including the one between Ukraine and Russia. In conversations with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump took to Truth Social on Feb. 12, saying that during his discussion with Putin, the two agreed they wanted to “stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.”
Macron then outlined how he said France would deliver on the increases and the additional commission he plans to implement.
“So in France, we will deliver increases, additional ones. I’m building consensus, and I will do my job. And the political forces are all very aware of the situation,” Macron said. “On top of that, we have to do much more at the European scale. I convene a meeting beginning of this week, and we will have a European Council in the days to come, 6th of March. We will have some special announcement by the Commission to increase as well short-term financing.”
“What do we have to do? We need innovative financing to have much more common investment as Europeans. Why? Because we have to take our part of the burden, and we have to invest much more in our own security. First, to decrease your own burden. But, second, because this is our interest,” Macron said.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News/”Special Report With Bret Baier”)
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