PRESIDENT Macron has signed a new military budget which lifts defence spending to 2% of gross domestic product, as promised to Nato.
The budget came on the eve of parades to celebrate Bastille Day which commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris on July 14, 1789, and the beginning of the French Revolution.
While thousands of members of the military paraded through central Paris, around 110,000 others fanned out around the country to protect the celebrations, on alert after a Bastille Day truck attack in 2016 in Nice killed 86 people.
President Macron presided over the Paris parade, which commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris on July 14, 1789, and the beginning of the French Revolution.
The rise in the military budget had long been planned, but came just after a contentious Nato summit in which President Donald Trump assailed allies for not spending enough on defence. The spending hike also comes after the departure of the French military’s chief of staff on Bastille Day 2017.
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