🇫🇷Coalitions, French leadership, and major changes
Can France lead Europe's rearmament? ‘Coalition of the Willing’ meets to talk Ukraine, French public deficit reaches 5.8% of GDP in 2024, and Alexis Kohler leaves the Elysée
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This week
🇫🇷Can France lead Europe's rearmament?
🇺🇦‘Coalition of the Willing’ meets to talk Ukraine
📈Public deficit reaches 5.8% of GDP in 2024
🚪Alexis Kohler leaves the Elysée
🇫🇷Can France lead Europe's rearmament?
Right, let’s start this week off with some fun: I had the pleasure of having a very fun chat with
, the author of , where we covered several very important questions.Covering everything from the Franco-British plan to send troops to Ukraine, French leadership in Europe and attitudes to diplomacy, as well as what the future could hold for an emboldened Europe in a world where a rudder-less, Trumpian America throws all of it’s allies under the geopolitical bus.
If you want to listen in, check it out in the link below, where you can also find the link to
’s Spotify page:Can France lead Europe's rearmament? Live with Dave Keating and Julien Hoez
I had the great pleasure of sitting with Dave Keating from Gulf Stream Blues today for a fun discussion regarding the new paradigm of European security, the impact of Donald Trump’s presidency on European independence, and the level of influence the French are exerting right now as Europe does some serious soul-searching.
And don’t forget to let Dave and I know what you think, as we may do a few more of these.
🇺🇦‘Coalition of the Willing’ meets to talk Ukraine
While Thursday 27 March 2025 saw the Paris summit on building a robust peace for Ukraine and Europe, it was precipitated by a meeting this Wednesday 26 March between Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This meeting resulted in several key announcements, such as French aid being increased by €2 billion, with this money going towards purchasing Milan anti-tank missiles, air defence equipment, Mistral surface-to-air defence missiles, armoured vehicles, AMX 10RC tanks, ammunition and drones that will be invaluable for the Ukrainian war effort against the Russian invasion.
The summit the next day continued along much of the same lines, with the 30 allied countries meeting to “finalise” security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a peace agreement being reached with the Russian invaders.
Firstly, it was announced that sanctions on Russia would not be lifted anytime soon, with President Macron underlining that it was necessary to “maintain economic pressure” as the war continued. This statement was backed by current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister.
“It makes no sense to end sanctions until peace is really restored, and unfortunately, we are still far from that”
- Olaf Scholz in Paris, Thursday 27 March 2025
Alongside this, Macron announced new training programmes for the Ukrainian army, as well as an acceleration of loans that would allow the Ukrainians to purchase more artillery.
The topic of the “coalition of the willing” for boots on the ground in Ukraine, with agreements having been reached on a “Franco-British team” that will be sent to Ukraine to begin preparing the “Ukrainian army of tomorrow”, and how to best equip Ukraine to take on Russia in the future.
This would be combined with the ‘coalition of the willing’ preparing so-called ‘reassurance forces’ that would be sent to ‘strategic locations’ in Ukraine following the end of the war.
According to Emmanuel Macron, “these reassurance forces are not intended to be peacekeeping forces [or] forces present on the line of contact [or] forces that replace the Ukrainian armies", but would instead “sign long-term support and would have a deterrent character with regard to potential Russian aggression.”
And all of this served to hammer home a message that Gaullists, Macronists, and pro-Europeans have been aggressively pursuing for decades: that Europe needs to realise it cannot rely on its American “allies”, and it needs to become an independent, powerful geopolitical actor that can leverage it’s continent for the greater good.
However, all of this faced one major challenge: the battle for public opinion in France.
Naturally, opposition parties came out in force to challenge the amount of spending being put out, highlighting the ongoing problems with French public finances. Notably, Marine Le Pen (RN), stressed by her financial embezzlement case and potential political ban and trying to distract her followers from the potential end of her career, notably coming out with one interesting critique:
However, this pristine political commentary from the leader of the party that took on a hefty Russian loan is that she doesn’t didn’t wait long enough to check where the money was coming from.
And she wasn’t the only one, which is why Emmanuel Macron went onto Instagram on Friday 28th March to clarify some things
Explaining that the whole package was “financed thanks to the military programming law, the efforts we had anticipated and thanks to the European funding and within the framework of the G7 that we have decided”, he underlined that “no, this aid is not aid that will be financed by hidden or additional taxes, this is totally false.”
But when have populists ever let the truth get in the way of anything.
📈Public deficit reaches 5.8% of GDP in 2024
Sticking with the economics of it all: the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) announced this Thursday 27 March 2025 that the public deficit rose to 5.8% of GDP (€169.6 billion) in 2024, rising from 4.7% in 2022 and 5.4% in 2023.
According to INSEE, this is explained by the 3.9% increase in public spending last year, with Social Spending, such as the revaluation of pensions, accounting for 60% of this.
Public debt sits at around 113.0% of GDP, or €3,305.3 billion, while revenues saw an acceleration, raising to 3.1% in 2024 compared to 2.2% in 2023.
With the Economy Ministry expecting the public deficit to exceed 6% for 2024, this was welcomed as good news, attributed to "very well-maintained spending" and better-than-expected revenues by Economy Minister Eric Lombard on France Inter.
However, he also cautioned that the deficit was too high and threatened French “sovereignty”, which is a big part of the reason for the so-called April ‘public finance conference’ that Prime Minister François Bayrou announced last week.
À voir if this will work.
🚪Alexis Kohler leaves the Elysée
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To finish off the week, there is a pretty hefty personnel change happening at the Elysée, with Secretary General Alexis Kohler having announced that he will leave in mid-April.
Nicknamed anything from Macron’s “twin” to the “vice-president,” and considered by some to be the “éminence grise” that helped make Macron’s presidency what it is, Kohler’s departure after eight years in the post is a significant blow to Macron’s second presidency.
With only two years left on the clock, many people are wondering how this will unfold, given that Kohler has been President Macron’s right-hand man since he served as Minister of the Economy between 2014 and 2016. During this time, he helped Emmanuel Macron design the programme that contributed to Macron's victory in the 2017 presidential election.
He was also the individual who filtered any and all meetings going to the President, and even helped to moderate some of the more impulsive actions that the President may have had.
Emmanuel Macron himself made it clear just how important he was in a statement given to Le Figaro:
“Alexis Kohler put all his energy, talent and unparalleled work force at the service of our political project and the French people … He served our country in an exemplary manner over the years. I know how much our collective action owes him and I know that he will continue his commitment to the nation in other forms”
He will be replaced by Emmanuel Moulin, the former head of cabinet for Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and former director of the French Treasury.
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