‘It makes NO SENSE’ Anger at Macron over military budget cuts after soldiers attack
PRESSURE is growing on President Emmanuel Macron to “reverse” his controversial decision to cut the 2017 defence budget by €850m (£770m) after six anti-terrorism soldiers were injured in a car-ramming attack on Wednesday.
President Emmanuel Macron's decision to cut the 2017 defence budget by €850m has sparked outrage
The soldiers were starting their patrol when the suspect – an Algerian national who was not known to French intelligence services – deliberately ploughed a hired BMW into their unit in the northwestern Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, which is where France’s domestic counter-terrorism agency, the DGSI, is based.
The injured soldiers are part of Operation Sentinel, a 7,000-strong force launched in the wake of the January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.
Florian Philippot told Europe 1 radio: “The first thing Mr Macron needs to do is scrap the planned military budget cuts.
“Operation Sentinel is obviously not ideal, because it weighs heavily on the army and on soldiers’ capacity for training.
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The terror threat to France has never been higher, and yet, despite this, the government wants to lift the state of emergency and slash defence spending
“It’s a security operation that should be carried out by the national police or the gendarmerie, and not by the army, which has already been stripped to its bare bones.”
MP Daniel Fasquelle, a member of the centre-right Republicans party, also denounced Mr Macron’s proposed budget cuts, saying the government could not starve armed forces of funding at a time when the terror threat to France was at its maximum level.
Mr Fasquelle told radio RMC: “The signals being sent by the Mr Macron’s government are far from reassuring.
Macron is pressured to 'reverse' his decision after six anti-terrorism soldiers were injured
"The terror threat to France has never been higher, and yet, despite this, the government wants to lift the state of emergency and slash defence spending,” .
“Operation Sentinel is still useful, but it needs to be radically overhauled.”
Soldiers were injured when an Algerian national ploughed a BMW into their unit in Paris
MP Clémentine Autain, a member of the hard-left France Unbowed party, also joined in, saying that Operation Sentinel was not a logical operation because the elite troops were being purposefully targeted by terrorists.
Mrs Autain told franceinfo radio said: “Soldiers whose job is to protect citizens from potential terrorist attacks are now having to protect themselves.
MP Daniel Fasquelle denounced Mr Macron's proposed budget cuts and insisted more money is needed
“It just doesn’t make sense. We need the government to come up with a more in-depth response to the terror threat.”