Emmanuel Macron's speech: "Our freedoms in the broadest sense are threatened, particularly by Russia," says Buno Tertrais

Bruno Tertrais, Deputy Director of the Montaigne Institute, was a guest on "8h30 franceinfo" on Monday, July 14, 2025.

Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Institut Montaigne [a French think tank with a liberal outlook], was a guest on "8h30 franceinfo" on Monday, July 14, 2025. Emmanuel Macron's speech to the Armed Forces, our country's new era, the massive recruitment of reservists... He answered questions from Antoine Comte.

"To say that freedom is almost as threatened as it was during the Second World War, I'm not sure many French people can relate to that. But Emmanuel Macron is not entirely wrong to be so serious, to be so determined," the political scientist asserts. However, according to him, our country is not directly facing a physical threat. On the other hand, "the freedom of all the countries bordering Russia is threatened, physically, as we were in 1939. And if we take freedom in the broad sense, the freedom to be well-informed, the freedom not to be manipulated, these are threatened in particular by Russia, but not only."

On Sunday evening, during his speech to the armed forces , Emmanuel Macron announced a doubling of the defense budget by 2027 compared to 2017, compared to 2030 as initially planned. To achieve this, the head of state wants 3.5 billion euros of additional spending in 2026 and then three billion more in 2027. "We will therefore devote 64 billion euros to our defense in 2027, which is double the budget the armed forces had" ten years earlier. To this end, he added, "an update of the military programming law" for 2024-2030 "will be presented in the fall."