Macron Says “Njet”: Why France Still Won’t Deliver Leclerc Main Battle Tanks: Jury Finds New York Halloween Attackers Guilty Of Murder

“And France?” asked the largest Parisian radio station, France Inter, after reporting on the announced delivery of German Leopard tanks to Ukraine. The question remains without a clear answer for now, which speaks volumes about the embarrassment of French diplomacy.

On Sunday, in the presence of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Macron said he “didn’t want to rule anything out” provided the decision was “collectively agreed”; He instructed the Ministry of Defense to “work” on a possible deployment of French Leclerc main battle tanks.

That sounded as evasive as Scholz’s statement at the time that the Leopard issue was not current for the time being. Now that the German side has managed to deliver main battle tanks, Macron himself is suddenly under pressure. At the beginning of the month, he had taken the initiative and single-handedly announced the delivery of AMX-10 wheeled light reconnaissance tanks. Intentionally or not, he too put pressure on Berlin.

Now the same fate overtakes him. While the US, Germany, Britain and other Western countries send heavy tanks east, the French president hesitates. Parisian diplomats complain that France’s leading position in the EU is further weakened by this wait-and-see attitude.

When it comes to military aid, France lags behind not only the US, Great Britain, Poland or Germany, but also small states like the Czech Republic or Latvia or distant countries like Canada. And after Macron broke through recently, he is now coming back to the fore when it comes to the tank issue, according to Paris sources.

Macron’s problems

Macron “congratulated” Germany on Wednesday on its Leopard decision. The very short and dry statement, however, poorly disguised the anger Scholz had suppressed on Sunday at the Franco-German celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty in Paris. Unless he informed Macron of the impending Leopard decision.

Parisian commentator Renaud Pila doubts this, accusing the German government of coordinating with American rather than French allies in an emergency.

However, the French hesitation also has technical and logistical reasons. The French Leclerc tanks have been out of production since 2008 and many of the 226 examples in France are currently unserviceable. The French army doesn’t even have enough Leclercs for their own training purposes.

This is also due to strategic armament decisions made at the beginning of the new century: at that time, the General Staff in Paris considered light reconnaissance or armored personnel carriers better suited to combat ill-equipped enemies such as Islamists or regional potentates.

As a result, the army command significantly reduced the original stock of 800 heavy battle tanks. Macron therefore makes the supply of Leclerc models to Kiev conditional on “not reducing the capacity of our defenses”. (aargauerzeitung.ch)