Since 2023, France has devoted at least 2% of its GDP to defence spending, a threshold it had not crossed since the early 2000s. This return to Atlantic Alliance norms resembles climbing back up a slope. It occurs at the precise moment when the slope has tilted considerably steeper.
The 32 NATO countries sealed an agreement in June 2025 in The Hague to raise their spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. France will spend more: that is settled. What remains to be decided is who pays, according to what institutional architecture, and whether France does it alone or by building something lasting at European scale.
Sixty Years of Quiet Disarmament
French defence effort shrank continuously from the 1960s to the mid-2010s. This decline stems from a peace dividend that Europe extracted without naming it, and without putting it into reserve.
Since the early 2000s, the rate has hovered around 2% of French GDP [2]. This apparent plateau masks a less flattering reality: while France stagnated, others were rearming. The United States has increased its military spending by more than 59% since 2000 [2].
China has multiplied it by more than six over the same period [2]. Russia has nearly tripled it [2]. Poland was already devoting more than 4% of its GDP to military spending in 2024 [2].
In 2025, the budget of the Ministry of Defence reaches 52.3 billion euros excluding pensions [1]. That is 3.3 billion more than in 2024 [1]. The military programming law 2024-2030, voted in June 2023, provides for 413.3 billion euros over the entire programming period [4]. That is 118 billion more than the previous one [4]. These objectives are already being surpassed by the targets set in The Hague.
In 2025, France has devoted nearly 7 billion euros to its nuclear deterrence, or approximately 13% of the defence budget and 0.2% of GDP [1]. The median salary stood at 2,190 euros net per month in 2024 [9]. These 7 billion represent the equivalent of 266,000 years of this salary, devoted to maintaining the credibility of a weapon France hopes never to use.
The Budget Wall of 2030
The objectives discussed in the debate put military spending at 3.5% of GDP, or even 5%, against approximately 2% in 2025. This ambition poses a financing problem in already fragile public finances.
The last defence effort at 3.5% of GDP dates back to 1970 [3]. To return to an effort at 5% of GDP, you have to go back to 1962 [3]. In current euros, reaching 3.5% of GDP in 2030 means nearly doubling military credits [3]. From 59 billion today, we would pass to 120 billion [3]. Targeting 5% would bring the bill to 170 billion [3].
France posted the largest public deficit in the eurozone in 2024, at 5.8% of GDP [3]. Its debt reached 113% of GDP, third in the zone [3]. France Stratégie calculated what a 3.5% target in 2030 costs, combined with 1% of GDP for ecological transition [3]. It would be necessary to bring the growth of other public spending down to 0.9% per year, or approximately 15 billion euros in annual savings [3]. Between 2001 and 2023, this growth reached 3.2% annually on average [3].
France Stratégie identifies four levers to achieve this, in its May 2025 note [3]. First lever: controlling public spending. Second lever: increasing taxes, equivalent to 2 additional percentage points of VAT per year for five years [3].
Third lever: raising the employment rate by 4.7 additional percentage points in five years by 2030, or approximately 1.9 million additional jobs [3]. Fourth lever: resorting to European financing via common debt [3]. Relying on a single one of these levers seems unrealistic given the scale of the effort. It will be necessary to mobilize several.
The classic trap consists of treating this sum as a question of internal fiscal distribution: increase here, cut there. This is precisely the reasoning which, repeated for sixty years, has produced the shortfall.
Three Ruptures That the Programming Law Does Not Name
The first rupture is geopolitical. The risk of erasure of the American protector has worsened since Donald Trump’s return to power in January 2025 [6]. The United States still represented 66% of the Alliance’s military spending in 2024 [2]. The Hague summit in June 2025 reminded European states of their budgetary responsibilities within NATO [6]. France aspires to a more sovereign Europe of defence, while remaining dependent on American capacities in intelligence, strategic mobility, and cybersecurity.
The second rupture is nuclear. Russia has deployed tactical nuclear missiles in Belarus since 2023 [8]. The United Kingdom has increased its nuclear arsenal by 45% [8]. China is adding a hundred warheads per year to its stock [8]. These developments forced an update of French doctrine.
On March 2, 2026, on the Île Longue, the President of the Republic confirmed the evolution of French nuclear deterrence and announced the increase and modernization of the arsenal [11]. France remains the only country in the European Union to possess nuclear deterrence. The extension of this deterrence to European allies is now posed, but unresolved.
The third rupture is technological. The expansion of cyberspace, the advent of artificial intelligence, and quantum computing now weigh on deterrence, according to Bruno Tertrais [7]. These technologies create new sources of instability. They accelerate decision-making time to the point of increasing the risk that a nuclear conflict breaks out following a misunderstanding or technical accident.
The deterrence that has stabilized Europe for sixty years rested on a human command chain, with decision time measurable in hours. Autonomous weapons systems and decision loops accelerated by artificial intelligence shorten this time. They make it incompatible with the doctrines inherited from the Cold War [7].
Transferring the Financing of Deterrence to European Scale
French nuclear deterrence is financed exclusively by the French taxpayer [1]. It is decided exclusively by the President of the Republic. It defends interests from which Europe benefits without sharing the burden.
This imbalance has been known for decades. Since the Hague summit in June 2025, it has become politically untenable [6]. The path sketched out consists of strengthening Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union with a genuine European defence treaty, quickly duplicating NATO’s means [10].
The arbitration that the 2027 campaign will have to settle is this: transfer a fraction of French deterrence financing to a mechanism of common European debt. This debt would be conditioned on a shared strategic consultation right among the participating states, without touching operational command, which remains presidential and French.
France Stratégie explicitly identifies recourse to common debt as one of the four realistic levers, capable of sharing part of the effort with our partners [3]. The Franco-British relationship is determining because it associates the two only European nuclear powers [6].
This lever changes three things simultaneously. Who pays: the European co-financing partners, not the French taxpayer alone. Who holds strategic legitimacy: a formalized European consultation replaces national monologue. What institution exists: a mechanism of common defence debt, distinct from the budgetary rules of the Stability Pact.
The cost of inaction is quantified. Maintaining the status quo means asking the French taxpayer to bear alone the passage from 2% to 3.5% of GDP [3]. Public debt already exceeds 113% of GDP and the deficit was the highest in the eurozone in 2024 [3]. For nuclear deterrence alone, moving from 7 to approximately 12 billion annually by 2030 mobilizes the equivalent of 457,000 additional years of median salary [1][9]. This amount would be decided in a format of the last century, a sovereign state spending alone, facing a threat shared by twenty-seven countries.
Sources
[1] Ministry of Defence, “Key Figures for Defence 2025,” October 2025, https://www.defense.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/ministere-armees/Chiffres_Cle%CC%81s_2025_FR%20(10%202025).pdf (consulted 29/08/2026).
[2] SIPRI, “Yearbook 2024: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security,” French summary, GRIP, October 2024, https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/yb24_summary_fr.pdf (consulted 29/08/2026).
[3] France Stratégie (Claeys G., Moura S., Quennesson L., Trinh J.), “How to Finance Rearmament and Our Other Priorities by 2030?”, Flash Note No. 2, May 19, 2025, https://www.strategie-plan.gouv.fr/comment-financer-le-rearmement-et-nos-autres-priorites-dici-2030 (consulted 29/08/2026).
[4] Senate, “Report on the Draft Finance Law for 2025: Defence Mission,” l24-144-39, 2024, https://www.senat.fr/rap/l24-144-39/l24-144-39_mono.html (consulted 29/08/2026).
[5] Senate, “The Necessary Modernization of Nuclear Deterrence,” working group report, r16-560, 2016, https://www.senat.fr/rap/r16-560/r16-560_mono.html (consulted 29/08/2026).
[6] All Europe, “NATO Summit: By Approving an Increase in Military Spending, Europe Crosses a Strategic Threshold,” June 26, 2025, https://www.touteleurope.eu/l-ue-dans-le-monde/sommet-de-l-otan-en-approuvant-une-hausse-des-depenses-militaires-l-europe-franchit-un-seuil-strategique/ (consulted 29/08/2026).
[7] Bruno Tertrais, Pax Atomica? Theory, Practice and Limits of Deterrence, Odile Jacob, January 2024, https://www.odilejacob.fr/catalogue/histoire-et-geopolitique/geopolitique-et-strategie/pax-atomica-_9782415005849.php (consulted 29/08/2026).
[8] SIPRI Yearbook 2025, cited in IDN, “Breaking the Trap: Why War Makes Nuclear Disarmament Essential,” June 2026, https://www.idn-france.org/sortir-du-piege-pourquoi-la-guerre-rend-le-desarmement-nucleaire-incontournable/ (consulted 29/08/2026).
[9] INSEE, “Salaries in the Private Sector in 2024,” INSEE First No. 2079, October 23, 2025, https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/8657156 (consulted 29/08/2026).
[10] Jacques Delors Institute, “Europe in Debate: Defence 25: Breaking New Ground,” with Nicole Gnesotto, 2025, https://institutdelors.eu/evenements/leurope-en-debat-quelle-defense-pour-l-europe-de-demain/ (consulted 29/08/2026).
[11] BFMTV, “300 Heads, 7 Billion Euros in 2025, Missiles in Submarines or Rafales: Can French Nuclear Deterrence Be Extended to Europe?,” February 25, 2026, https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/entreprises/defense/300-tetes-7-milliards-d-euros-en-2025-des-missiles-dans-des-sous-marins-ou-des-rafale-la-dissuasion-nucleaire-francaise-peut-elle-s-etendre-a-l-europe-un-discours-de-macron-est-attendu-le-2-mars_AD-202602250570.html (consulted 29/08/2026).
