The French like the army when it becomes European and… when it defends French interests
(BRUSSELS2) It's a paradox. Generally the military swears only by their flag, watching with suspicion any sharing, pooling or pooling. In the population, the trend is quite the opposite. This is the main lesson of a survey (*) carried out by Ifop for Public actors and Ernst & Young (*). Within the framework of the reform of the White Paper, the French are thus 90% in agreement with the idea of intensifying collaborative efforts between European armies (37% totally for, 53% somewhat agree). With only 2% totally against, we could almost speak of a virtual plebiscite! They are also a clear majority (79%) to want to revise the external intervention policy of the French army (79%) such as modernizing army equipment (80%) or supporting the French defense industry (83%). We are thus in a socialo-Gaulian posture, revised Monnet, if we can say so 🙂
From the point of view of the priorities assigned by the French to defense policy, the protection of the vital interests of the country (52%) is in the lead followed (at 32%) by "participation in the stability and protection of European territory with our partners". A strong age divide runs through this European objective of French defense policy: it is only mentioned by 25% of the youngest and rises rapidly among adults in working life (73% among 25-34 year olds , 69% among 35-49). But it is around 60 and over that it peaks at 80%. The defense of the vital interests of the country is segmented along a right-left axis: clearly in the majority on the far right (91%), it then decreases slowly to the Left Front (60%); PS, Modem and UMP sympathizers being on a substantially identical trajectory (70%, 71% and 78% respectively). The sending of humanitarian intervention forces abroad does not receive strong approval (13%) and there too we find a marked political segmentation, but reversed in relation to the previous assertion: sympathizers of the left front are clearly for (54%) and the curve goes down slowly on that to sympathizers of the extreme right (11%).
On the Defense budget, the French are split 50/50 on the State's ability to manage these major expenditures well: 49% believe that the public money devoted to national defense is used efficiently, a comparable proportion (51%) considers the opposite. A figure to put into perspective, however, according to Damien Philippot, director of political studies at Ifop. A study by public actors published in January on housing policy, gave only 18% positive interviewees. So 50% is already a good result.
Last segment of the survey, the possible recommendations of the white paper, 90% support the idea of a more intense collaboration with the European armies, 79% consider that it is necessary to revise the external intervention policy of the army France and 64% want to see establishments outside France reduced and to continue to merge existing bases.
(*) Public actors/Ernst & Young survey carried out by Ifop for the Observatory of public policies among a sample of 1 people representative of the French population aged 008 and over, according to the quota method (sex , age, profession of the interviewee) after stratification by region and category of agglomeration. The interviews took place by self-administered online questionnaire (CAWI - Computer Assisted Web Interviewing) from February 18 to 12, 14.
