France’s Sarkozy Softening on Defense After Electoral Stumble

Still sailing?(click to view full) French President Nikolas Sarkozy spent time with aerospace & defense industry leaders at the Paris Air Show on June 23rd. The speech took place a week after recent Parliamentary elections that featured a center-right majority, but resulted in a loss of some outgoing seats for Sarkozy’s UMP party and a much smaller margin of victory than previously expected. Defense-Aerospace reports that the French President’s speech pointedly failed to repeat his election promise to keep defense spending to 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Instead, he pushed for a bottom-up review of ongoing and projected weapon programs based on the new government’s ongoing audit of current defense acquisition efforts, which is due in July 2007. Sarkozy also called for more “rationalization” of programs into multinational European efforts, and added that France must change the way it buys its weapons to reflect a prioritized expression of capability requirements. Sarkozy’s comments, and their implications, reportedly echo similar warnings from Defense Minister Hervé Morin… Morin said on June 21/07 that “the current level of defense spending will be very difficult to maintain,” given that procurement spending would have to increase by 43%/ EUR 4 billion from 2009 – 2011 […]