Just over a month after France and Ukraine signed a defense agreement on February 16, providing Kyiv with military aid worth "up to €3 billion" in 2024, the funding for this support is still extremely unclear, given that the French government separately announced measures to cut spending by €10 billion for the current year. On Tuesday, March 26, Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu addressed these uncertainties at a press conference on the theme of "the war economy," although the budgetary issue appears to be very complicated for the government.

Many of the governing coalition's lawmakers say they are regularly questioned by voters in their constituencies who say they don't understand why the government is giving "€3 billion to Ukraine" at a time when the screws are about to be tightened on the budget, and the possibility of tax hikes has begun to be mentioned.

This complaint was also heard during farmers' protests at the beginning of the year, amid a controversy over Ukrainian chicken imports. "People ask us why we are giving €3 billion to Ukraine, it comes up a lot," admitted Mathieu Lefèvre, an MP from Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party, who has been distributing leaflets in his constituency for the European elections in recent days. The Assemblée Nationale's budget rapporteur Jean-René Cazeneuve also heard this phrase in his southwestern French constituency.

From a strictly budgetary point of view, the government's room for maneuver is also limited. In principle, support for Kyiv has been taken out of the 2024-2030 military expenditure planning law (LPM), passed in July 2023, in order to preserve the reinforcement of the French armed forces. Protecting this law was even considered a "red line" by Lecornu's staff, as the minister has stressed in recent months that the planned spending of €400 billion over those six years was not a "ceiling" but a minimum "base" for the military, after years of underfunding.

To raise the billions promised to Kyiv, the government is currently forced to get creative. Depending on the options currently being considered, the €200 million extension of the Ukraine support fund – voted at the end of 2023 as part of the end-of-year rectifying budget – could be included in these calculations, as this envelope has not yet been spent in practice. Similarly, the Armed Forces Ministry has estimated that there is room for maneuver with inflation forecasts being revised downwards: From 5.4% in 2023 to 2.3% in 2024.

To show decent support for Kyiv without actually disbursing any money, Paris has also planned to play to the supposed total value of military equipment donated to Ukraine. These include Caesar cannons, exports of which the Armed Forces Ministry has been doing its utmost to boost since the beginning of the year through an "artillery" coalition of allied countries. In January, Lecornu announced that he was ready to pay for 12 additional cannons for Kyiv in 2024; while on Tuesday, March 26, he stated that a system of co-financing with Denmark and Ukraine had been established to finance the purchasing of a further 66 cannons this year – including six bought by Ukraine alone. Each Caesar cannon costs around €5 million.

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