For the first time in many months, French MPs and senators have had the opportunity to discuss the foreign policy directions taken by President Macron in a debate on the bilateral agreement negotiated by the head of state between France and Ukraine. Although the discussions were stormy, the representatives generally voted in favour of France’s strong support for Ukraine. However, a number of grey areas remain, particularly as regards the terms of France’s military commitment.
For several months, some MPs have been calling for a proper debate on France’s foreign policy choices. Such a debate had not been held since June 2021. Up for a vote was now an agreement signed on February 16th between Volodymyr Zelensky and Emmanuel Macron.
The agreement, spanning ten years, provides for increased military cooperation between the two countries, particularly in the areas of artillery and Ukrainian air defence. Paris has also pledged to pay up to €3 billion in additional aid in 2024—at a time when the government is constantly talking about the poor state of public finances and the need to make drastic budget cuts. The Minister for the Armed Forces defended himself by pointing out that part of the €3 billion would directly benefit French defence industries in the form of orders: “the French economy will therefore benefit,” he explained.
Opening the debate, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal reviewed the history of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine since the invasion in February 2022 and restated France’s support for the Ukrainian cause. It was an opportunity for him to wreath President Macron, whose decisive catalytic role in mobilising Europe alongside Ukraine he praised:
By launching this offensive, Vladimir Putin thought he was dividing Europe. He was wrong. From the very first hours of the conflict, under the impetus of the French President, Europe reacted.
The Prime Minister reminded MPs of France’s financial commitment to the conflict: “We are the second largest contributor to the European Peace Facility, with more than €1.2 billion committed between the start of the war and the end of 2023.” This massive support has been motivated from the outset by three criteria: “delivering what Ukraine needs, without weakening our own armies, and doing everything possible to avoid escalation”, Attal recalled.
Attal then detailed his conviction that Russia was a threat not only to Ukraine, but also to Europe and France. He defended the idea already put forward by President Macron in his meeting with party leaders on March 7th: “We are not setting ourselves any limits in the face of a Russia that is not setting any”, in contradiction with other remarks made earlier in his speech: “we are taking a considered approach to reaffirming our support for Ukraine, but without waging war on Russia and rejecting any logic of escalation.”
Before leaving the podium to give the floor to the opposition, the prime minister invoked the spirit of the French Resistance and June 1940 to justify the vote in favour of the Franco-Ukrainian agreement. The use of rhetoric imbued with—historically questionable—references to the Second World War has become commonplace among members of the government and the presidential majority in order to lend a strong moral dimension to support for Ukraine.
The various parties represented in the National Assembly all expressed scepticism about the president’s statements and condemned the president’s warmongering, while being keen to emphasise their detestation of Russia and their support for Ukraine.
The strongest reservations came from the communist Left and the Greens. Fabien Roussel, general secretary of the Communist Party, reiterated his party’s opposition to Ukraine’s integration into the European Union and NATO and supported the need to envisage peace negotiations: “Working towards a diplomatic and rapid end to the war is not an insult to Ukraine. The Ukrainian people also aspire to peace and security,” he explained.
The Greens strongly criticised the president’s method, which consisted of convening the MEPs once the treaty had been signed by Macron and Zelensky, rather than before the discussions. “It will have taken a month for Parliament to be asked to debate and adopt a position on the agreement,” criticized Cyrielle Chatelain, chair of the Green group. She decried the fact that the positive vote in favour of the agreement could be interpreted as “a blank cheque for the President of the Republic, his warmongering rhetoric and his logic of escalation.” While reaffirming her party’s support for the Ukrainian cause, she denounced Macron’s “accumulation of warlike postures, without consulting our partners,” which she deemed “an error, a mistake, and reckless risk-taking.” “It’s a dangerous and above all ineffective spiral,” she added.
The far-left representatives from La France Insoumise criticised the vote as a “sham,” which amounted to giving the President a “blank cheque,” since the content of the agreement, which had already been signed, had not been submitted for debate.
In her speech, one of the last to come, MP and leader of the Rassemblement National parliamentary group Marine Le Pen reiterated her party’s opposition to the economic sanctions imposed on Russia, a procedure “which has shown its limits.” She recalled that support for Ukraine should not make us forget “our duties to the French people”, and particularly stressed the danger posed by Macron’s statements on the possibility of sending French ground troops to Ukraine.
Defending the position of her group, which has decided to abstain on a vote that it deems “neither necessary nor proportionate,” Marine Le Pen finally condemned the executive’s use of the war in Ukraine for electoral purposes in the run-up to the European elections in June: “Either you are pro-Macron, or you are accused of being pro-Putin. You have hijacked, exploited and exploited a major international crisis to serve a short-term electoral agenda,” she criticised. “For the security of the French people, we cannot support the conditions you are setting in this agreement. But to show our support for Ukraine, we will be content to abstain,” she concluded.
At the end of the discussions in the National Assembly, the bilateral agreement was approved with 372 votes in favour. 99 deputies voted against, mainly on the Left, and 101 deputies abstained, including 88 RN deputies. The Les Républicains group voted overwhelmingly in favour. Sovereigntist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, on the other hand, voted against it.
To a large extent, this was a purely symbolic vote, since no French political force is seriously questioning support for Ukraine, and the representatives of the various parties were keen to ostensibly defend the Ukrainian cause. But a message of concern nevertheless came through on several occasions, along with condemnation of the French President’s attitude as irresponsible. The revelations in the weekly Marianne about the army’s scepticism regarding the critical situation in Ukraine, which makes military obstinacy more unreasonable than ever, suggest that the French president is well and truly isolated in his choices, both in France and internationally.
