In June 2022, a few months after the invasion of Ukraine, the President of the Republic promised to enter “a war economy”. An economy in which, by definition, defense and its industrial sector became the absolute priority of the entire nation. The objective: “Move faster to be able to reconstitute more quickly what is essential for our armed forces, for our allies or for those we want to help.” Two years after the start of the conflict, in February 2024, the Ukrainian president recalled that only 30% of the shells promised by the EU were sent to Ukraine. The following month, the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, threatened requisition to force manufacturers to increase production rates. Emmanuel Macron has resigned himself to buying munitions outside Europe for Ukraine and making a clear observation on March 14, 2024: today France “does not have an industry ready for a high-intensity war” . However, the French flagships are legion in this sector: EADS, Thales, Safran, Dassault to name but a few, without forgetting the thousands of SMEs who work alongside them.
In reality, it must be said that since 2022, manufacturers have been called upon to win a war alone. The State has given no impetus to mobilize the country’s resources. On the capital side, the implementation of a savings product intended to support the efforts of industrialists is lagging. The parliamentarians’ proposal for partial or total tax exemption for fixed assets by defense industries remained a dead letter. However, it could have enabled them to acquire strategic stocks and critical components, the absence of which is today a hindrance. On the human resources side, here too, companies in the sector are left to their own devices: no action to encourage vocations, relax regulations or facilitate the use of temporary work.
Why the Macronian lexical field is becoming radicalized
Contrary to what Emmanuel Macron announced in 2022, everything did not change with the invasion of Ukraine. At the top of the State, priorities continue to evolve according to current events: orders and counter-orders follow one another. A few months after his speech, the start of the 2022 school year gave way to another priority, that of school, before the following winter was devoted to purchasing power with the first effects of inflation. The year 2023 brought a series of priorities, each more priority than the last: first work with pension reform, then security following the riots and finally agriculture last winter. At the end of the first quarter of 2024, defense once again seems to be the priority… for a while only, since the Elysée has just discovered that France is crumbling under deficits and public debts. Problems to which the government offers semantic treatments in the absence of political solutions: a country that is going in circles, a political class that is discrediting itself and the French who are growing impatient.
The call for general mobilization takes place in this interminable five-year period of response to everything and everyone. This is devastating for the conduct of public policies, but also in the eyes of an opinion for which everything is now on the same level, that of emergency. This is why the Macronian lexical field is radicalizing: that of war was widely used during the health crisis, the word “rearmament” was used seven times to talk about demography or civics. By misnaming things, the executive is running out of ammunition to convince the French that this subject will perhaps become the only real priority, not probably to wage war but to show that we are ready if the circumstances command it.
The 2022 speech and the presidential statement of 2024 prove that the President of the Republic has made a choice: that of the war of words rather than that of the war economy. A strategy which certainly feeds continuous information chains, but not production or supply chains.
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