{"id":32258,"date":"2026-06-27T12:14:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T10:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lesrencontreseconomiques.fr\/debats-idees\/doing-more-with-less-how\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T12:15:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T10:15:51","slug":"doing-more-with-less-how","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.lesrencontreseconomiques.fr\/en\/debats-idees\/doing-more-with-less-how\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing More with Less&#8230; How?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the Rencontres \u00c9conomiques d&#8217;Aix-en-Provence, St\u00e9phane Boujnah, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Managing Board of Euronext, will participate in the plenary session &#8220;What Ambition for French Defence?&#8221;. In this opinion piece, he examines the challenges facing France and argues for rethinking how the nation finances, organizes and mobilizes itself to meet the new demands of defence. <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The challenges are well known. Over the next five to ten years, France will have to confront an unprecedented range of strategic threats not seen since the end of the Cold War. It will need to develop new capabilities, particularly dual-use capabilities, to respond to emerging hybrid threats. It must also undertake the most significant rearmament effort since the Second World War.   <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">France&#8217;s defence policy will have to evolve within alliances that have changed profoundly. NATO in 2026 is no longer the NATO of 1949. Likewise, Germany, Poland, Sweden and Norway in 2026 are no longer the countries they were in the post-war era. At the same time, France will have to commit significantly greater public financial resources to defence, despite an unprecedented level of public debt and debt-servicing costs unmatched elsewhere in Europe.   <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">France must therefore rearm more quickly, mobilise greater resources and build more innovative capabilities&#8230; but with far fewer financial means. How can this contradiction be overcome? <\/p>\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-blue-reaix-color has-text-color has-link-color has-large-font-size wp-elements-4e5ab1ec89d05c0b0c3e899a90e448df\">An Increasingly Challenging Budgetary Equation<\/h2>\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The collapse of France&#8217;s public financing capacity over the next five to ten years is inevitable. France spent approximately \u20ac65 billion on debt servicing in 2025. This figure will rise to at least \u20ac72 billion in 2026 and is likely to exceed \u20ac82 billion in 2027.  <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During the presidential election year, France will devote a larger share of taxpayers&#8217; money to servicing its debt than to educating every child and young person in the country, from primary school through to the end of secondary education. Such levels of indebtedness will not be sustainable. Over the next decade, France will face either a period of deliberate fiscal consolidation or one of imposed austerity.  <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, this deterioration in France&#8217;s public finances will stand in stark contrast to the defence spending trajectory of its European allies, particularly Germany. In 2025, France&#8217;s defence budget amounted to around \u20ac50 billion, compared with approximately \u20ac62 billion in Germany. By 2026, France is expected to spend around \u20ac57 billion on defence, while Germany will exceed \u20ac82 billion. By 2030, France&#8217;s target defence budget stands at around \u20ac76 billion, compared with approximately \u20ac180 billion in Germany. France&#8217;s financing constraints, when compared with Germany&#8217;s fiscal capacity, are likely to reshape Europe, leaving France relatively poorer than it is today and poorer than its German neighbour.    <\/p>\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-blue-reaix-color has-text-color has-link-color has-large-font-size wp-elements-ff8cacaa019618c952c209834c5d9c8a\">Inventing a New Culture of Total Defence<\/h2>\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Beyond the traditional approach to financing, France must develop new organisational models, new processes, a new mindset and a new culture of Total Defence capable of creating greater flexibility and agility.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Where are the greatest sources of flexibility? Most certainly in mobilising every part of the nation. France must move away from the comfortable position of being a nation of &#8220;consumers of defence&#8221; and embrace the responsibility of becoming a nation of &#8220;producers of defence&#8221;, by drawing on the country&#8217;s considerable reserve of free time.  <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is one of the distinctive characteristics of French society among developed countries: an abundance of free time, much of which already supports civic and voluntary engagement. This new approach, akin to a form of &#8220;voluntary and light-touch conscription&#8221;, should involve citizens through a fundamental redesign of the reserve forces. It should also engage globally active companies that face new geopolitical threats while representing valuable national assets for Total Defence.  <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally, defence and dual-use technology industries will need to develop new &#8220;good enough&#8221; production models that often prioritise speed of delivery over maximum performance. They must also accelerate European industrial consolidation to deliver joint programmes more rapidly, overcome the mistrust that is sometimes stronger between companies than between governments, and make better use of shared resources and capabilities to maximise the collective effectiveness of Europe&#8217;s defence. <\/p>\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n<p class=\"has-blue-reaix-color has-text-color has-link-color has-large-font-size wp-elements-38a0776cc7747655c7d086ecc11662fc wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Mobilising the Nation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of this is achievable because France and Europe already possess the essentials: talent, technology, private capital and, in several European countries, real operational experience of war and military engagement. <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The challenge now is to bring the entire nation into a genuine Total Defence dynamic, where every French citizen embraces the words of Thucydides: &#8220;You must choose between resting and remaining free.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":32257,"template":"","cat-theme":[74],"cat-axe":[],"class_list":["post-32258","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cat-theme-geopolitique-relations-internationales"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Doing More with Less... 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