Emmanuel Macron promises a memorial for the dead soldiers in operation

Honor fallen soldiers for France in recent years. President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on Friday to the military community, baduring him of his support, after promulgating the Military Planning Act (LPM) 2019-2025, providing for an increase in defense credits.

"With this law of military programming, we will treat the difficulties of the past, improve the present and prepare the future of our country by giving him the means of his defense, "he said in the gardens of the Hotel de Brienne , at the traditional reception given by the Ministry of the Armies the day before the procession of July 14.

The Parliament approved in June the new LPM, which provides for nearly 300 billion euros of accumulated credits for the defense. The defense budget should benefit from an increase of 1.7 billion euros per year until 2022, before "marches" of 3 billion per year from 2023.

A monument "soon"

A year to the day after the open crisis between Emmanuel Macron and his chief of staff Pierre de Villiers on budget issues, which had caused the departure of the latter and thrown a cold in the armies, the president said his "gratitude" to the military community, his families, his wounded and his dead.

"I want to pay tribute to you on behalf of all the French and to express my deep gratitude to you," he said. Minister of the Armies Florence Parly at his side. The Head of State renewed the "condolences" of the nation "to all families who lost a father, a brother, a son, dead on mission", and announced that a memorial for soldiers died in foreign operations in the last decades would be "soon" erected in a park of Paris.

This monument, planned for a long time, was to see the light of day this year but the project dragged long. It will bear the name of the 600 soldiers who died for France during external operations since the end of the wars of decolonization.

Universal service of one month

The president also evoked his project of universal national service (SNU) mandatory one month for young people of about 16 years of age, the details of which will be specified after a consultation of the youth. "I want this social reform that will be the universal national service", and "the military community will have a role to play," he said.

Emmanuel Macron also announced that he would like France to "define in the course of next year, a space defense strategy "which" will have a vocation to be developed at European level ". "Because of the conflict it creates, space is a real national security issue," he added. A task force launched by Ms. Parly will make her findings in the fall.