France is reassessing planned defence cuts in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris on 7 January, France's president has announced.
Speaking on board the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle before it sailed to conduct operations in the Indian Ocean, François Hollande stated that "the exceptional situation…must allow us to revise the rhythm of military reductions planned for the next three years in accordance with the Loi de Programmation Militaire (LPM)".
The LPM law defines French financial planning over a five-year period. Under the 2014-19 LPM, the armed forces were tasked with cutting 23,500 personnel (on top of the 10,000-strong reduction implemented by the 2009-14 LPM). In total, two-thirds of these positions were to come from support, headquarters, and administrative roles.
In 2014 alone 7,881 posts were lost, and a further 7,500 were due to go in 2015. This included the closure of a military hospital in Paris, the disbandment of the air force base in Dijon, and the disbandment of the 1st Régiment d'artillerie de marine (1er RAMa).
However, Hollande has now asked French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to make some proposals to halt this trend - while considering current budget constraints.
The French defence budget has already been set at EUR31.4 billion (USD36.8 billion) in 2015, including EUR2.4 billion (7.5% of the budget) expected from the 'ressources exceptionnelles' (REX) extra-budgetary funding. These were to be found from sale of property and land, and the sale of military telecommunication frequencies. However, while property and land sales are on track, the EUR2.2 billion expected to be raised from the frequencies sale is not expected to reach the defence budget until 2017, leaving a big gap in the 2015 budget. This gap will widen should the forecast job reduction not occur as a result of the Islamist attacks in Paris.
A defence committee is scheduled to meet on 21 January and it is expected that Hollande will make an announcement thereafter.
COMMENT
Hollande has made a significant change to his military policy, although he fell short of a complete U-turn given that he did not discuss reversing the reduction in French forces. Instead, the expectation is that cuts will be made less abrupt.
However, the question remains: where is the money to mitigate the reduction? The decrease in the size of the armed forces was supposed to properly finance the remaining forces and enable new investments.
One solution could be to cut into the investment effort, but there is little doubt that the military sphere will not be pleased with the possibility of delays to long-due maintenance work, training, or to the Army's Scorpion modernisation programme, in order to pay for the 10,000 soldiers walking the streets of Paris.
