Europe's freedom faces greatest 'threat' since WW2, says Macron
Macron pledged to double France's military budget by 2027, three years earlier than originally planned. In 2017, his country's defence budget stood at €32bn and under the plans would rise to €64bn in two years time. The proposals still need to be approved by the French government."To be free in this world, you must be feared. To be feared, you must be powerful," he said in the speech, which fell on the eve of Bastille Day.Macron said the world was witnessing the return of nuclear power and the "proliferation of major conflicts". He also referenced the US bombing of Iran, fighting between India and Pakistan and what he called the "ups and downs in American support for Ukraine".Last month, Nato members agreed to commit to spending 5% of GDP annually on defence, up from the previous target of 2%. The UK also announced its own defence review, with Defence Secretary John Healey saying it would send a "message to Moscow".On Friday, the head of the French army, Thierry Burkhard, said Russia saw France as its "main adversary in Europe".Russia posed a "durable" threat to Europe, Burkhard said, adding that the "rank of European countries in tomorrow's world" was being decided in Ukraine.France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou is expected to outline next year's budget on Thursday.
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At about 10am on Thursday January 25, 2024, I called a senior member of the Ministry of Defence press office, whom I had known for years, to tell them I was aware of a data leak. It had put lives at risk and it was the subject of a superinjunction, I said. I told him I had known about the matters for some time and wanted to join the court proceedings. I did not realise at the time that everything I said during that initial phone call would be written down and submitted to the High Court. It would form part of a 1,568-page bundle of evidence documenting the longest ever superinjunction and the only to be sought by a government. I had no idea of the magnitude of what I was dealing with. I was told I needed to come into the Ministry of Defence as soon as possible. I needed a lawyer. I was joined by Pia Sarma, our editorial legal director, who had been at the company 15 years and had worked on the most serious of cases. At the meeting in Whitehall, surrounded by an MoD legal team, we were asked how I had come to know about the superinjunction. It was a matter of national security. Did my knowledge of it suggest that news of the breach had leaked into the wider world? While I reassured them it did not, as a journalist I was under no obligation to tell them how I came to find out about it. I did not. Then we were 'served' with the superinjunction. From that point on, we could not tell anyone what we knew or even that the injunction existed. A small number of senior individuals at the organisation were brought into the tight circle. As we joined legal proceedings, it was clear how significant the case would be. Tens of thousands of Afghans asking the UK government for help were now at risk of death. In the first hearing we attended in 2024 I stood up and told Mr Justice Chamberlain, the judge overseeing the case, that it could become an election issue. 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The Afghan Response Route, the scheme set up to help the Afghans, was closed down without the public ever knowing it existed. Many questions were left unanswered. I was frustrated, having known for years so many Afghans who had worked alongside British forces during the war. I had reported on their plight for a decade and persuaded successive ministers — Gavin Williamson, Priti Patel, Ben Wallace — that the policy on Afghans had to change. When I found out about the data breach in August 2023 I was on maternity leave. It was shortly before Grant Shapps, the new defence secretary, was granted the superinjunction by the courts to stop the breach becoming public. I was also just about to publish my first book, The Gardener of Lashkar Gah, about Shaista Gul, a gardener and his interpreter son, Jamal Barak, who had helped British troops fight the Taliban. I was in regular contact with Afghans who had been brought to the UK. I knew only too well what they had already been through. Constant delays to the court process pushed the lifting of the superinjunction closer towards the summer recess, with less time for MPs to hold the government to account for its decisions. In the final days, the MoD tried to move the lifting of the superinjunction until after prime minister's questions. After two years of cover-up, there were concerns there would still be no time for proper scrutiny. The judge refused to move the time the injunction would be lifted when the government wanted to align it with their own arrangements for making a statement to parliament.
