For the past few weeks, embattled French President Emmanuel Macron has been positioning himself as Ukraine’s foremost defender on the international stage.
In a press conference at the White House 9 days ago, he took the unexpected step of interrupting Trump and correcting his (false) claim that European countries have been merely loaning money to Ukraine. Since then, he has floated the idea of sending French troops to enforce a peace deal, while stating forcefully that Europe must “continue to help Ukrainians resist” because peace “cannot mean Ukraine’s capitulation or collapse”.
That all sounds very noble and Churchillian. Yet it flies in the face of what France has actually done to help Ukraine, which is… not very much.
The Kiel Institute provides detailed data on aid to Ukraine via its ‘Ukraine Support Tracker’. This database reveals that, since the start of the war, France has given Ukraine 0.18% of GDP in bilateral aid. (That’s 0.18% of 2021 GDP, not 0.18% of GDP in each year of the war.) How does this compare to Ukraine’s other allies? Well, it’s less than the % given by Estonia, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Croatia, the US, the UK, Czechia, Canada, Germany, Romania, Belgium, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Japan, Austria and Iceland.
In fact, both Estonia and Denmark have given a remarkable 12 times more bilateral aid than France (as a % of GDP). Even Germany, which received a lot of stick at one point over its lacklustre support for Ukraine, has given 2.4 times more. Now, France has also given aid to Ukraine via the EU institutions, but so has every other EU country.
France’s rather paltry contributions are particularly noteworthy given that France has the most powerful military in the EU. According to the Global Firepower Index, the French military is the seventh most powerful in the world. The next highest EU country, Italy, is ranked tenth.
Let’s suppose that France had given the same % of GDP as Denmark, that is, 2.17%. French GDP in 2021 was €2.75 trillion. 2.17% of that figure is €60 billion. Subtract the amount France actually gave (€5 billion) and you get €55 billion. That’s a huge figure, amounting to 73% of the Russian defence budget in 2022. I imagine Ukraine could have found some use for an extra €55 billion.
Not only has France given far less aid than most of Ukraine’s allies; it’s also been importing billions of euros of Russian energy. According to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, France imported €3.5 billion in Russian energy last year. Which means that it actually sent more money to Russia in the form of energy payments than it sent to Ukraine in the form of aid (the €5 billion France sent to Ukraine came over three years).
Note that I’m not arguing France necessarily should be giving substantially more aid to Ukraine. As regular readers will know, I’m sceptical of the policy Western countries have pursued. My point is that Macron is engaging in cheap talk.
The French President has described Russia as an “existential threat”. Yet his actions belie this. Would you buy billions of euros of energy from a country you considered an “existential threat”? If Macron really wants to help Ukraine’s armed forces, he should stop posturing and give them what they say they need. And other leaders should start criticising his lack of action.
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