France, equipped with a military-industrial complex, exports armaments to foreign states. In the 2010s, it was the third-largest arms-exporting country in the world, behind the United States and Russia; since the 1950s, the country has consistently ranked among the top five global arms exporters.

These arms sales are conducted by industrial companies, often with the state as a shareholder; they form the industrial and technological defense base. The public authorities play a driving role in exports through a proactive policy initiated in the 1960s by President Charles de Gaulle, for reasons as much economic as political and diplomatic. The sale of military equipment abroad accounts for approximately one-third of the arms industry’s revenue, contributes positively to the country’s trade balance, and supports tens of thousands of jobs. Politically, exports are deemed essential to offset the cost of military research and development, thereby making the defense industry profitable, which successive governments consider a key instrument of France’s independence. They also serve French diplomacy, particularly during the Cold War, by promoting the non-alignment of Third World countries.

Although subject to an increasingly stringent national legal framework—requiring prior authorization through an export license—and international regulations over the years, French arms exports face numerous ethical and sometimes legal criticisms: the state and French industrialists have repeatedly armed countries at war (e.g., during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s), others accused of war crimes (such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervening in Yemen in the 2010s), as well as dictatorships or authoritarian regimes that may use them against their populations, violating human rights (e.g., South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s under apartheid, and Egypt in the 2010s).

The export of armaments by France was, until the interwar period, primarily driven by private initiatives from arms merchants (notably Schneider et Cie), with, however, “a progressive intervention by the state,” explains Emmanuel Guematcha, a doctor of international public law. This intervention accelerated significantly after the First World War: the “arms dealers” were then accused by antimilitarist and socialist circles of being responsible for the horrors of the war and of being war profiteers.

After the Second World War, public policies on exports emerged, guided since the 1960s by political objectives, primarily economic and diplomatic. Economist and researcher at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Jean-Paul Hébert, writes:

The period 1960-1972 appears as a foundational period, during which the political, economic, and structural conditions were established, enabling the significant development of export contracts later (particularly in the period 1974-1986) and the expansion of the French arms sector.

According to Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, a researcher in defense economics, “support for arms exports in France stems from the foreign and defense policy orientations established under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle (1959-1969),” who led the state to invest in the French industrial and technological defense base to give substance to the notions of sovereignty, independence, and grandeur he promoted for the country. Among the political, legal, and financial instruments established were the creation in 1961 of the Ministerial Delegation for Armament (DMA)—predecessor of the General Directorate for Armament (DGA)—and “Article 90,” a procedure allowing industrialists to benefit from state financial advances for armament projects intended for export.

While Jean Klein, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), traces the emergence of the “specific traits of French policy” on arms sales to the 1960s, for Jean-Paul Hébert, there does not appear to be a true armament policy or export orientation at the start of the decade. According to him, it was likely the political questions and contestations that emerged in 1970, when France symbolically broke with its sales to the State of Israel to begin exporting to Arab countries, that prompted the state to develop a strategic orientation in this area—Foreign Affairs Minister Maurice Schumann declared before the National Assembly in 1970: “in truth, there is no French policy on armament contracts.” The 1972 White Paper on National Defense thus represents the “most complete expression [of this] period of political elaboration” (Jean-Paul Hébert) and sets forth two arguments.

The first argument is economic: indeed, the state budget—and thus national armament orders, the domestic market—is insufficient to “sustain a modern defense industry,” particularly given the significant investments required for research and development; exports (as well as the pursuit of civilian applications for military innovations) are therefore economically necessary for French defense policy.

The second argument is political and diplomatic: the sale of arms to foreign countries (particularly in the Third World) is a tool for their independence from the two major powers of the time, the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR). This orientation stems from the “rejection of blocs, i.e., non-alignment with the great powers.” As Lucie Béraud-Sudreau explains, this political motivation was shared by the presidencies of Charles de Gaulle, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and François Mitterrand.

France’s proactive defense policy, perceived as an instrument of the country’s autonomy, has been continued by successive presidents and governments, forming a political consensus still in place in the 2010s, despite the economic dependence on exports it entails. This dependence makes France a “guardian” state in the typology of exporting states developed by researchers Lucie Béraud-Sudreau and Hugo Meijer. This type of state “seeks to avoid the transfer of sensitive technologies,” but its small domestic market forces it to seek export markets, reducing its strategic maneuvering room, unlike the “hegemon” state, such as the United States: the size of its domestic military market “allows it to impose strict controls [on exports of advanced equipment] due to the low cost of these restrictions for its industry,” “to preserve its military preeminence.”

In the 21st century, one of the main justifications for exports remains that they enable economies of scale to reduce the cost of armaments used by the French army, given the high fixed cost of research and development, thus ensuring the country's military sovereignty. The sale of armaments also remains “one of the vectors of French power worldwide,” a tool of geopolitical influence, writes journalist Romain Mielcarek in 2017.

The exports of the French military-industrial complex are primarily the result of consistent political will across governments (cf. supra), implemented by the General Directorate for Armament, “the true linchpin of the Ministry of Defense’s industrial policy” (L’Usine nouvelle).

French arms exports are made possible by its military industry, which maintains strong ties with the French state, on which it depends politically and economically: the state purchases the majority of production for its armed forces, invests in research, and has the authority to authorize or prohibit arms exports (vital for the industry, as they account for approximately one-third of its revenue). Contemporary French industrial actors are private companies (Arquus, Dassault), most of which have the state as a minority or majority shareholder (Safran, Thales, Airbus, MBDA, Naval Group, Nexter).

The arms industries are grouped within three major professional federations: the Groupement des industries de défense et de sécurité terrestres et aéroterrestres (GICAT)—co-organizer, with the Ministry of Defense, of the Eurosatory arms trade show—the Groupement des industries françaises aéronautiques et spatiales (GIFAS), and the Groupement des industries de construction et activités navales (GICAN). These, together with chambers of commerce and industry, “play an important role” (according to the General Directorate for Armament) in the arms export process.

GICAT, GIFAS, and GICAN are united within the Conseil des industries de défense (Cidef), an organization created in 1990 that notably serves as a lobbying body to elected officials on behalf of industrialists.

Several professional trade shows allow these actors to showcase their products: Eurosatory for land-based armaments, Euronaval for naval equipment, the Paris Air Show for military aeronautics, and Milipol for equipment intended for internal security.

The General Directorate for Armament (DGA), attached to the Ministry of the Armed Forces (formerly the Ministry of Defense), acts as the project manager for armaments: it is “responsible for the design, acquisition, and evaluation of systems equipping the French armed forces,” it contributes to funding research in the armaments field (supporting both large industrial groups and small and medium-sized enterprises), and it plays a central role in the

support for arms exports. It is their “pivot,” according to doctor of management Didier Danet, and is considered an “essential ally” for industrial groups, notes L’Usine nouvelle in 2017. French military personnel, overseen by the DGA, participate in promoting French equipment, primarily at professional trade shows.

State investments in defense, outlined in military programming laws, are notably made through armament orders placed by the DGA to equip the French army, with an average annual amount of between 10 and 11 billion euros. For military equipment, being acquired by the French army—or, better yet, used by it in operational theaters—is an additional selling point that industrialists and the DGA can use with foreign delegations.

In addition to the DGA, the Ministry of Defense can also work to facilitate French arms exports. This was particularly the case during François Hollande’s presidency, during which Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian created a group of advisors called “Team France.” Meeting monthly with all stakeholders (industrialists, DGA, etc.) for coordination within the Ministerial Committee on Defense Exports (Comed), “Team France” actively solicits foreign states to sign new contracts, with considerable success.

Arms sales contracts generally include industrial compensation clauses determined by the importing state: in exchange for the sale of military equipment or technologies, the selling state must reinvest a portion (potentially up to 100%) of the contract’s value into the buyer’s economy. These compensations can be direct, i.e., in the armaments sector (e.g., producing part of the sold equipment in the buyer’s country or transferring technology to it), or indirect, i.e., in a sector other than armaments, possibly through third-party French companies. Initially often required by emerging countries seeking to develop their industrial and technological defense base, compensations are becoming more widespread.

The promotion of French military equipment abroad also involves sales agencies, often public or with state participation: they bring together industrialists and are essential intermediaries in contract negotiations until the end of the

20th century. One of the best-known is the Société française d’exportation de systèmes d’armes (Sofresa), created in 1974 by the Messmer government and dedicated to the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. However, several agencies predate the war. These companies are regularly suspected of corruption, notably through commissions and retro-commissions (cf. infra). The Société française d’exportation de matériels, systèmes et services relevant du ministère de l’Intérieur (Sofremi) was accused in 2000 of arms trafficking; Libération then judged the arms agency system to be “on the edge of legality.”

Most of these agencies saw the state disengage in the 1990s and faced financial difficulties. However, Sofresa was succeeded in 2008 by the Office français d’exportation d’armement (ODAS), which represents the interests of the state and French industrialists in Saudi Arabia; a decade later, it lost influence, partly due to the “progressive marginalization” of France with the Saudis.

Private organizations (COFRAS, NAVCO, AIRCO, etc., which notably gave rise to Défense conseil international) are tasked with maintaining the equipment on-site once exported.

In France, as elsewhere, industrialists are not the only ones negotiating with client countries. Businesspeople paid by the selling company act as intermediaries, soliciting states that could be potential clients and, to convince decision-makers to purchase armaments, often pay commissions to anyone likely to influence the purchase. The arms market is indeed a monopsony, and competition between suppliers is often fierce. Until a legislative change in 2000, paying commissions to foreign public officials, though considered corruption and criticized as such, was legal under French law (cf. infra).

France’s client states fluctuate over time, depending on the diplomatic relations it maintains and the international geopolitical and economic context.

France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, due in part to the technical superiority of Prussian Krupp cannons, led the head of state, Adolphe Thiers, to request that the steelmaker Schneider et Cie, a major French industrial group of the time, develop more modern cannons. Using stronger steel, it turned massively to military equipment production. This industrial development, initially intended for state arsenals, was made possible by opening international markets, thanks to a legislative change: an 1884 law “removed all obstacles to the sale of military equipment to foreign countries,” allowing Schneider et Cie to compete with global arms industrialists. Cannons or cannon components were thus sold to the Italian and Spanish navies, and Japan became one of the main clients of the French manufacturer—nearly a monopoly in the Hexagon—by the end of the century.

Until the start of the First World War, Schneider et Cie also produced and sold armor plating for warships (notably battleships) to foreign countries (the Italian navy, the American company Bethlehem Steel via a production license, etc.), designed to protect them from increasingly powerful shells and torpedoes. In 1898, 60% of the armaments produced by Schneider et Cie were destined for export.

The Forges et chantiers de la Méditerranée produced warships starting in the 1880s for both the French navy and foreign countries (Spain, the Kingdom of Greece, the Empire of Japan, the Russian Empire). This private company was used by the state for its foreign policy; exports were often authorized only to allied countries.

Between 1905 and 1908, Schneider et Cie delivered 1200 cannons to around twenty countries, primarily in the Balkans, where they were notably used during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. In 1906 and 1907, the company exported 400,000 munitions to the Russian Empire, a major client. On July 12, 1907, Russia ordered a full range of artillery pieces, some to be built starting in 1909 at Le Creusot, the rest under license at Poutiloff in Saint Petersburg and Perm. Several of these models were later adapted to French calibers and used by French artillery during the First World War:

• 3-inch mountain cannons model 1909 (76.2 mm);
• 42-line cannons model 1910 (106.7 mm), used in France as the 105 mm model 1913;
• 6-inch siege cannons model 1909 (152.4 mm), in France the 155 mm L 1877/1914;
• 6-inch field howitzers model 1910 (152.4 mm), in France the 155 mm C 1915;
• 8-inch howitzers (203.2 mm);
• 9-inch mortars (229 mm), in France the 220 mm model 1915 TR;
• 11-inch mortars model 1912 (279.4 mm), in France the 280 mm model 1914.

In 1909, submarines designed by engineer Maxime Laubeuf were exported for the first time.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, France developed a war economy focused on armament production. This was primarily intended for the French army but was also delivered to France’s allies. French cannons were notably exported or manufactured in Russia—a member of the Triple Entente and a major French client—and deliveries were made to Italy and the United States after they joined the Allies in 1915 and 1917. Various French armament companies (Schneider et Cie, aeronautical manufacturers Blériot or Hanriot, etc.) thus supplied Serbia, Belgium, Greece, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States.

In particular, an aeronautical partnership was formed between the French and Americans: the French initially hoped the latter would supply them with aircraft; France’s technological lead in aeronautics ultimately led the Hexagon to deliver aircraft across the Atlantic and have certain aeronautical components manufactured there, under the leadership of André Tardieu on the French side, whose main interlocutor was General John Pershing, head of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). “On August 30, 1917, a contract for 2000 SPAD and Nieuport fighter planes, 1500 bombing and observation aircraft Breguet 14, and 8500 engines” was signed, recount historians Marie-Catherine Villatoux and Patrick Facon, marking a commercial success; however, the contract was only partially fulfilled, and mutual deliveries suffered chronic delays, though France managed to equip the AEF. In total, of the 6364 aircraft received by the United States Army Air Service, 4874 were French.

After the war, France was the world’s leading exporter of aircraft (both civilian and military, which were then closely linked).

It also exported combat tanks, a decisive new weapon that emerged in 1916. Starting in 1919, Renault’s FT tank was produced solely for export. Its success

was considerable, and it was the first tank of many countries. The United States produced the M1917 light tank (nicknamed the 6 Ton Tank) under license, derived from the French tank, which was their first mass-produced armored vehicle; it remained active until the late 1930s. Beyond exports and licensed production, the FT tank inspired other countries or was copied: the Bolsheviks seized several units used by the White Russians during the Russian Civil War and produced a copy called “Russky Reno,” the first tank of the Soviet military-industrial complex, which later inspired the T-18.

During the interwar period, after the collapse of the Central Powers and while the Russian Revolution led France to lose an ally, the French state sought diplomatically to strengthen ties with the new Central European states to protect itself from Germany. This policy, particularly targeting Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia, was implemented economically and militarily, with exports of French arms, notably in aeronautics. Poland thus benefited from French assistance for its rearmament, including financial advances: over a thousand aircraft were exported from France or produced in Poland with French assistance in the 1920s, and Polish artillery and navy underwent modernization. Arms sales in Central Europe were also driven by the Škoda factories: these were Czech but employed engineers from the French company Schneider et Cie, and part of the production was under French licenses.

These arms deliveries continued on the eve of the Second World War, with several hundred Renault R35 tanks delivered, for example, to Poland (invaded by Germany and the USSR in 1939), Romania (occupied by the Wehrmacht starting in 1940), and the Turkish Land Forces (deliveries began in early 1940). The Royal Romanian Air Force was equipped with highly diverse equipment: aircraft of Italian (Savoia-Marchetti S.79 with Gnome-Rhône K.14 engines), British, French (Potez 56), American, German, Polish, and Romanian manufacture. In 1937-1938, Romania purchased and flew in twenty twin-engine light bombers Potez 633 and ten medium bombers Bloch 210.

The 1950s, due to military needs generated by the army’s engagements in colonial wars in Indochina and then Algeria, did not see a true export policy emerge. Nevertheless, France had two significant clients: the young State of Israel and India, independent since 1947. In 1953, the latter acquired 71 Ouragan aircraft, while Israel ordered 24. The Hotchkiss TT 6 armored reconnaissance vehicle, sold in 1956 to the newly formed West German army in 2600 units with its variants, was also one of the greatest export successes of the French military industry during this period.

In the early 1950s and until 1967, the Hebrew State became France’s main client (and France its main supplier), primarily for geopolitical reasons: it was then an ally of France in the fight against Arab nationalism and in the context of the Algerian War. However, in 1967, President Charles de Gaulle imposed an embargo on the belligerents of the Six-Day War, including Israel, which had ordered fifty Mirage 5 aircraft from France the previous year; this date marked the end of arms sales to Israel, which thereafter turned to the United States for supplies.

The 1960s marked the emergence of a proactive French export policy (cf. supra), primarily targeting clients other than developed countries. Indeed, the latter—particularly members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—were the “exclusive domain of the United States for major equipment,” emphasizes economist and researcher at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales Jean-Paul Hébert. Between 1961 and 1990, Europe and NATO accounted for 27% of French exports: France withdrew from NATO’s integrated command in 1966 under Charles de Gaulle’s impetus, which “posed a handicap for the export of French arms to allied countries,” writes Jean Klein, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). From then on, France exported “in the gaps of American policy.”

From around 1965 to 1985, the “golden age” of arms sales, the global Cold War context and decolonization, which gave rise to states eager to assert their sovereignty, contributed to a robust arms market. South Africa was also among France’s main clients, even more so after the end of commercial relations with Israel—from 1969 to 1972, the country ranked among the top five buyers of French armaments—although, under a partial UN embargo in 1977 due to its apartheid policy, it gradually developed its own military industrial capabilities.

At the turn of the 1970s, the dictatorships that were Franco’s Spain, the Greek junta, and Salazar’s Portugal accounted for approximately 10% of French arms exports, which also made a notable but fleeting incursion into Latin America (Peru in 1967, then Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador until 1971), previously almost a U.S. monopoly.

Between 1968 and 1972, according to DGA data, Western Europe and North America were the main recipients of French arms exports, accounting for about 50% of them on average; over the same period, aeronautical equipment accounted for 70 to 75% of exports (across all regions).

“At the start of 1970, the sale of 110 Mirage aircraft to Libya [...] contrasting with the embargo on the delivery of 50 Mirage 5 ordered by Israel, symbolized the new directions of French trade,” writes historian Jacques Frémeaux. Although France had already exported armaments to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran in 1968 and 1969, the Mirage sale “was perceived as a shift in French policy from support for Israel to support for Arab countries” (Jean-Paul Hébert), which thereafter became regular clients of the Hexagon. Between 1961 and 1990, the Middle East accounted for 31% of French arms exports; in the early 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War, 45% of exports, in value, were destined for this region. “In 1984, for example, Mirage V or F1 aircraft were found in the air forces of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates,” recounts Jacques Frémeaux.

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a major oil supplier to France, was the Hexagon’s top client starting in 1976 and at least until 1980, the year the Iran-Iraq War began. France, whose leaders did not wish to see Iran win the conflict, supplied Iraq with 121 Mirage F1 aircraft, as well as Exocet air-to-sea and Roland surface-to-air missiles. Exports slowed in the 1980s due to Iraq’s payment difficulties and ceased in August 1990, when the UN imposed an embargo following the invasion of Kuwait—several fighter jets were thus never delivered. France’s support for Iraq during this period drew criticism.

Several major international programs, mostly with the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Italy, in the fields of aviation and missiles, were finalized at this time, such as the SEPECAT Jaguar combat aircraft (over 210 units exported outside France and the UK) and the Alpha Jet trainer aircraft (around 160 units exported outside France and West Germany). A Franco-West German consortium was established in the 1970s by Aérospatiale (France) and MBB (Germany) to produce the HOT and Milan anti-tank missiles and the Roland anti-aircraft missile, 70% of which were exported.

After the Cold War, in the early 1990s, global arms exports declined due to reduced defense budgets in many states, particularly due to lower oil revenues—and thus solvency—of several of them. French arms exports fell from the mid-1980s, and “according to General Pestre, the share of Middle East orders in the total order value dropped from 61% in 1990 to 21% in 1993,” reports Jacques Frémeaux. Additionally, starting in the early 1990s, as the Gulf War highlighted the consequences of arms sales to dictators, international efforts to regulate the arms trade multiplied. Finally, after this war, the “immense political weight” of the United States translated into arms assistance to several Middle Eastern and Maghreb countries, competing with French exports in the region, which were thereafter largely limited to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar.

From 2002 to 2011, according to DGA data, the Middle East was the top region for French arms exports in terms of delivery value (18 billion euros in 2011), followed by the European Union (9.8 billion euros) and Asia (8.9 billion euros), out of a total of 46.3 billion euros. Over the same period, France’s main client countries, in descending order of contract value, were Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, the UAE, the United States, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and, closely followed, Morocco, Australia, and South Korea.

Between 2008 and 2017, still according to the DGA, France’s largest clients were India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, and, at similar levels, the United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Morocco. Over the shorter period of 2013 to 2017, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, France’s top three clients were Egypt (25% of exports), China (8.6%), and India (8.5%).

In 2010, France signed a contract to sell two Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia. In 2013, the Ukrainian crisis erupted: Russia’s actions, accused of supporting the occupation of Crimea (a Ukrainian peninsula), which was annexed to the Russian Federation in early 2014 after a contested referendum, were condemned by the European Union and the United States, among others. In this context,

France’s and President François Hollande’s stated intention to maintain the delivery of the two ships to Russia drew criticism from several European states and the United States. The delivery was ultimately canceled in September 2014, and the two ships were sold to Egypt.

In 2016, the sale to Australia of twelve Attack-class submarines built by Naval Group, for 35 billion euros (of which 8 billion for France), was dubbed the “contract of the century” by the press, until its cancellation in September 2021 in favor of the United States and the United Kingdom, triggering a diplomatic crisis.

In the second half of the 2010s, after Mohammed bin Salman’s appointment as Saudi Arabia’s defense minister in 2015, Saudi Arabia, a major client of the Hexagon, reduced its purchases of French military equipment amid misunderstandings between the two countries (notably regarding the role of the French Arms Export Agency). Over the period 2016-2020, according to Sipri, France’s top three clients by volume were India (21% of arms sales), Egypt (20%), and Qatar (18%), mainly due to the sale of Rafale aircraft to these three countries.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), a non-governmental organization, produces annual data on global arms imports and exports. These estimates are expressed in a unit it created, the trend-indicator value (TIV). The TIV accounts for the total production costs of an armament; its use by Sipri aims to provide a visualization of arms transfers (whether sales, donations, or licensed technology transfers) worldwide and over time. The TIV is not an indicator of the commercial value of arms or their sale price.

Arms exports from France

Decade	Exports in millions of TIV	World ranking
1950-1959	4 254	5
1960-1969	13 487	4
1970-1979	25 006	3
1980-1989	30 714	3
1990-1999	16 928	4
2000-2009	16 384	4
2010-2019	20 322	3
(2020-2023)	(11 559)	(2)

Value of arms deliveries invoiced by France, by year

Year	Current value in millions of euros
2008	3 172,8
2009	3 726
2010	3 783
2011	3 778,2
2012	3 379,1
2013	3 880,6
2014	4 045,4
2015	6 201,5
2016	7 121
2017	6 730,9
2018	6 966
2019	9 925,8
2020	4 306,7
2021	11 094,7
2022	7 662,7

In 2017, according to the Annuaire statistique de la Défense (ASD) published by the Observatoire économique de la défense (OED) of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, arms exports came from 784 companies, of which (in value) approximately 63% were from companies with more than 5,000 employees.

Jean Klein reports that in 1975, exports accounted for about one-third of the total revenue (CA) of the arms industry; in 1988, a Monde diplomatique journalist noted that “the army purchases about 60% of national production.” In 2018, exports would account for one-third of the industry’s revenue.

French arms industry sales breakdown

Year	In France	For export	Export share
1991	13,2	4,3	32,6 %
1992	12,8	4,4	34,4 %
1993	11,8	3,1	26,3 %
1994	12	2,6	21,7 %
1995	11,3	2,9	25,7 %
1996	10,4	4,5	43,3 %
1997	9,4	6,6	70,2 %
1998	9,6	6,4	66,7 %
1999	9,5	3,9	41,1 %
2000	9,5	2,7	28,4 %
2001	9,5	2,8	29,5 %
2002	9,4	4,4	46,8 %
2003	10,3	4,3	41,7 %
2004	10,4	7,1	68,3 %
2005	9,6	3,8	39,6 %
2006	10,3	4,0	38,8 %
2007	9,8	4,6	46,9 %
2008	10	3,2	32 %
2009	12,5	3,7	29,6 %
2010	10,9	3,8	34,9 %
2011	10,7	3,8	35,5 %
2012	11,7	3,4	29,1 %
Note: Data not available after 2012. Data for the same year may vary slightly depending on the year of publication of the sources (e.g.: in 1998, 9.6 billion euros for France according to the ASD 2010, 9.4 billion according to the Report to Parliament 2000); in the event of discrepancies, the data provided by the most recent source has been retained.

Arms exports consistently exceed imports (cf. table on coverage rate infra). The arms sector thus has a positive trade balance, contributing positively to France’s overall trade balance.

Exports were deemed all the more important in the 1970s, it was argued, as the price of oil—on which France was dependent—rose sharply following the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, increasing France’s trade deficit. “Between 1970 and 1980, these [arms] sales grew twice as fast as overall foreign trade,” writes Étienne Dalmasso in Annales de géographie in 1984.

Coverage rate for the armaments sector

Year	Coverage rate
1999	378 %
2000	274 %
2001	321 %
2002	480 %
2003	339 %
2004	602 %
2005	304 %
2006	276 %
2007	336 %
2008	268 %
2009	294 %
2010	270 %
2011	290 %
2012	286 %
2013	314 %
2014	294 %
Reading: A coverage rate of 200% means that exports are twice as high as imports. Note: data no longer available after 2014 due to a change in DSA methodology.

In 2016, companies comprising the industrial and technological defense base accounted for 20.7% of total French exports, according to OED data. Between 2009 and 2013, this figure was 24%, according to the Ministry of Defense.

According to a 2014 impact study by the Ministry of Defense, the Conseil des industries de défense (representing industrialists), and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, exported armaments represented, in 2013, 14,000 direct jobs and 13,500 indirect jobs among “tier 1” suppliers (i.e., direct suppliers of exporting companies), totaling approximately 27,500 jobs—about 18% of the arms industry’s total employment. An estimate of induced jobs (suppliers of suppliers of exporting companies) led the study to estimate a total of approximately 38,500 to 40,500 jobs linked to arms exports.

In 2016, according to the Observatoire économique de la défense, military equipment exports “supported approximately 74,400 direct and indirect jobs” in the Hexagon.

Exports account for about a quarter of the French arms industry’s jobs. The industry represents around 160,000 jobs in 2017, 200,000 according to the 2019 parliamentary report. This economic activity is “simply vital” for certain regions of metropolitan France, where it accounts for a significant share of jobs, writes journalist Romain Mielcarek. Consequently, most elected officials in these regions are staunch defenders of the industry and arms exports.

Until the end of the 20th century, there was no binding international framework for the arms trade, despite some failed attempts within the United Nations (UN) due to economic stakes for states; moreover, the priority in the decades following the Second World War was regulating weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, bacteriological, etc.). The United Nations did, however, impose situational embargoes on arms sales to certain countries.

It was only after the Cold War, in the early 1990s, amid intense armed conflicts in the Middle East (Gulf War), that a desire for international regulation of the arms trade emerged, through two UN resolutions: the first, adopted in 1991, led to the establishment by the UN Secretary-General of a register of conventional arms, including information on arms transfers, for greater transparency. The same philosophy underpinned the creation of the Wassenaar Arrangement in 1996, which requires its 33 member states (including France) to report their transfers of conventional armaments and dual-use goods. The second notable resolution, adopted in 2006 at the UN, aimed to rally states toward global arms trade regulation. This initiative—resulting from a campaign by several NGOs grouped under the Control Arms coalition—led to the Traité sur le commerce des armes in 2013, signed by 130 states, ratified by around a hundred (including France), and entered into force in 2014.

The TCA notably prohibits each state party, under Article 6, from transferring conventional arms: a) if it violates a UN embargo; b) if the transfer contravenes an international agreement to which it is a party; c) “if it has knowledge” that the arms “could be used to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, serious violations of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, attacks targeting civilians [...].” If the transfer is not subject to these restrictions, the TCA stipulates in Article 7 that the exporting state must “assess [...] whether the export of these arms [...] could be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation” of international humanitarian law or international human rights law.

In parallel, the Council of the European Union adopted in June 1998 a non-binding “Code de conduite de l’Union européenne en matière d’exportation d’armements”—its effectiveness criticized as such. Applicable to all exports to non-member countries, it includes eight common criteria for assessing arms export requests (respect for international commitments and human rights, maintaining regional peace and stability, etc.), identified by member states in 1991 in Luxembourg and 1992 in Lisbon; it requires a European state that has refused an export to inform others, who must justify a contrary decision if applicable.

Ten years later, in 2008, the EU Council adopted the legally binding Common Position 2008/944/CFSP, aiming to harmonize rules for exporting military equipment from member states to non-EU countries: it replaces the 1998 Code of Conduct (refining and clarifying its eight criteria) and imposes greater transparency from each state regarding its arms sales and increased consultation among states. These aspects are respectively materialized by the EU Council’s annual public report on European arms exports—coupled with the obligation for each member state to publish a national annual report on its arms exports—and bimonthly meetings among states within a “working group on conventional arms exports” within the Council.

Exports to EU member states are governed by Directive 2009/43/EC, which aims to facilitate intra-community arms trade and strengthen trust among member states through a simplified and harmonized system of “transfer licenses” (i.e., prior authorizations) issued by states to companies.

Article L2335-2 of the Defense Code requires prior authorization for the sale of armaments destined for countries outside the European Union.

The authorization is formally issued by the Ministry of Defense. The authorization process is under the responsibility of the Prime Minister. To make his decision, he relies on the advisory opinion of the Commission interministérielle pour l’étude des exportations de matériels de guerre (CIEEMG), which meets monthly. Chaired by the Secretary-General for Defense and National Security (SGDSN)—attached to the Prime Minister—it includes representatives from the Ministries of the Armed Forces, Foreign Affairs, and Economy. The most sensitive cases are then reviewed at the Prime Minister’s official residence by a representative of the Prime Minister; in practice, particularly in cases of disagreement within the CIEEMG, the President of the Republic may decide, though this is not provided for in regulatory texts. CIEEMG deliberations are not public. Armaments authorized for sale and export are listed by decree.

In addition to arms, certain “dual-use” equipment, i.e., usable for both civilian and military purposes, is subject to CIEEMG deliberations; however, in 2010, the Dual-Use Goods Service and the Commission interministérielle des biens à double usage were created to review dual-use goods listed in Annex 1 of EU Regulation No. 428/2009 of May 5, 2009.

To make its recommendations to the Prime Minister, the CIEEMG “relies on general criteria and specific guidelines for particular situations, such as embargoes, conflict zones, or human rights violations,” according to French diplomacy in the 2010s. Beyond compliance with legal provisions and international commitments and the concern to avoid arms sales that could harm the security of French and allied forces, three elements of French doctrine on authorizations, in the 1970s as in the 2010s, are:

• non-supply of armaments to countries engaged in open conflict (to maintain “regional peace and security”—2018 parliamentary report by the Ministry of the Armed Forces), with a distinction between defensive and offensive uses;
• the “distinction between arms that can only serve to protect a country’s security and those likely to be used for police and repression actions” (Jean Klein), to respect human rights;
• the “control of transfers of the most sensitive technologies” (SGDSN).

The CIEEMG was created in 1955.

Until June 2014, the authorization process was divided into two phases (prior approval and export authorization); it was then replaced by a single license. The DGA writes: “One of the main axes of the reform of export controls in France is the shift from a priori control logic to a posteriori control logic. As a result, monitoring the use of a license and the regularity of exports and transfers is the responsibility of the exporter.” The industrialist who obtains a license must then report its activities every six months to the Ministerial Committee for A Posteriori Control (CMCAP)—headed by the General Inspectorate of the Armed Forces—which can verify the compliance of the industrialist’s exports with the license held.

Researcher in defense economics Lucie Béraud-Sudreau reports that in 2000, “the processing of arms export authorization requests, the first step in controlling these exports, was removed from the Direction du développement international (DI),” which is attached to the General Directorate for Armament (DGA), also tasked with promoting French arms exports; the Direction des affaires stratégiques (DAS) then replaced the DI in this role. This change was driven by senior officials, the DAS, and members of the Defense Minister’s cabinet under Lionel Jospin, in a philosophy of political control over arms exports. However, in 2008, at the initiative of “senior officials close to N. Sarkozy’s government team, the DI leadership, right-wing deputies, and again members of the Defense Minister’s cabinet” favoring an economic policy to effectively support exports, the processing of export authorization requests returned to the DI as initially. Thus, export control and export promotion, two antagonistic missions, fell under the same service.

French arms exports are regularly criticized, some for the lack of transparency surrounding them, others for the human consequences (particularly regarding human rights) of arms deliveries to warring or dictatorial countries, and still others for the corruption accompanying some arms sales.

An academic article published in 2015 in Politiques européennes posits two factors to explain differences in arms export regulation within the European Union (the three authors compare Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Sweden): “the role of the Parliament in the decision-making process for controlling arms sales and the salience of the arms sales issue in public opinion.” These two aspects are precisely the subject of criticism in the 2010s.

In April 2000, deputies Jean-Claude Sandrier, Christian Martin, and Alain Veyret, members of the National Assembly’s Defense Committee, published a Rapport d’information sur le contrôle des exportations d’armement denouncing the opacity of the French system. They recommended establishing an annual report to parliament, desired to be more comprehensive than the first-of-its-kind report sent to them in March, on which they based their work, and creating a consultative parliamentary committee.

Much information related to the arms trade is classified as state secrets, as reported by Le Point journalist Jean Guisnel, a military affairs specialist: “Everything is covered by state secrecy. Everything. Absolutely everything.” While he acknowledges the classification of sensitive technical information about arms, he believes that “political decision-making [...] and legitimate debate within the state apparatus have no reason to be covered by state secrecy.”

The newspaper L’Humanité, NGOs Amnesty International and Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture (ACAT), the independent research center Observatoire des armements, and some deputies denounced in the 2010s a lack of information provided to Parliament by the executive regarding arms exports. The Ministry of Defense has submitted an annual “report to Parliament on arms exports” since the early 2000s, a “vast sham” according to deputy Sébastien Nadot (ex-LREM), given the lack of information that prevents any debate in the National Assembly. According to Aymeric Elluin of Amnesty International, “transparency on arms exports is virtually nonexistent in our country.” “We do not know precisely which military equipment is involved, to whom it is destined, or for what final uses. Deputies thus have no information enabling them to exercise the control they are supposed to exert over the executive’s actions,” states Hélène Legeay of ACAT.

Researcher in defense economics Lucie Béraud-Sudreau attests that Parliament has no say in the matter in France, while, as analyzed by Mediapart (2018) and Le Monde (2019), parliaments in other European countries debate arms exports.

Beyond criticisms targeting the annual parliamentary report, interviews with deputies, executive members, and NGO representatives (conducted by the researchers of the Politiques européennes article cited supra) reveal that it garners little interest from deputies each year; a Ministry of Defense official sums it up: “with us, the deputies don’t care.” This is also illustrated by the documentary Mon pays fabrique des armes (2018), as explained by Libération: “in a surreal sequence, Jean-Charles Larsonneur, an LREM deputy and member of the defense committee, admits to the journalist that he is looking at [this report] ‘for the first time.’”

In April 2018, 36 deputies, led by Sébastien Nadot (who protested in early 2019 that “France is killing in Yemen”), proposed creating a parliamentary inquiry into French arms exports to Saudi Arabia. The proposal faced strong opposition. In July of the same year, an information mission, with fewer investigative powers, was established on the broader issue of parliamentary control over arms exports.

The information mission led to a report published on November 18, 2020. It highlights the “robust nature of the state’s organization” in assessing the risks of arms sales but recommends better control of dual-use goods and—above all—the creation of a “parliamentary delegation for the control of arms exports” (modeled on the parliamentary delegation for intelligence), which would oversee France’s arms export policy ex post, with “advisory and recommendation powers”; it also recommends cooperation between EU national parliaments to achieve “normative convergence and practices in control matters.” Leaked by Disclose, a note classified “confidential defense” drafted by the Secrétariat général de la Défense et de la Sécurité nationale (SGDN) and dated the day before the publication of the parliamentary information report expresses opposition to the report’s various proposals, particularly the creation of a parliamentary control delegation, about which the SGDN writes that, under the guise of seeking greater transparency, “the goal seems clearly to constrain the government’s policy on exports by strengthening parliamentary control.”

Journalist and documentarist Anne Poiret highlights this lack of information for parliamentarians in her documentary Mon pays fabrique des armes (2018). She also underscores the absence of public debate on France’s arms sales, a “French specificity.” She further mentions an “omerta” in the arms industry, manifested by a refusal to respond to the press and the use of euphemisms to describe manufactured military equipment. According to Christian Mons-Catoni, former president of the Conseil des industries de défense françaises (Cidef), interviewed by her, “this industry does not need the media to take an interest in it. [...] To obtain what we need, we speak directly [to political decision-makers]. [...] Outside [specialized press], we try to avoid talking about what we do.”

According to the three researchers of the Politiques européennes article, the three major French dailies studied (Le Figaro (right), Le Monde (center-left), and Libération (left)) in 2013 generally held a position “in favor of weak regulation” of arms exports.

Journalist Diane Regny wrote in Le Monde in April 2019: “Presented as powerful allies of economic growth, arms contracts have long enjoyed a good press”; Aymeric Elluin of Amnesty International concurs and notes the “manifest disinterest of the French” in the matter. Le Journal du dimanche (2018) and Libération (2019) note that public opinion in France is less concerned with arms exports than in Germany.

However, the debate seems to have emerged in the public and media sphere in the second half of the 2010s, particularly regarding arms sales to Saudi Arabia, engaged in the Yemen war (cf. infra).

It is often argued by industrialists that if France does not sell arms to a given country, other states will do so in its place; nevertheless, some exports to authoritarian states or those violating human rights are criticized.

South Africa implemented an apartheid policy starting in 1948 under the National Party, institutionalizing racial segregation to the benefit of white Afrikaners, already in place in the country. In the 1960s, France became South Africa’s main arms supplier, despite a UN Security Council resolution of August 7, 1963, calling for “ceasing all deliveries or sales” to the country due to its apartheid policy, a resolution amended at the initiative of France and the United Kingdom to apply only to “anti-guerrilla” weapons (the armed wing of the ANC). In 1970, the South African state was France’s top arms client; beyond arms sales, the country benefited from technology transfers during this period.

After the 1976 Soweto riots, which caused several hundred civilian deaths and led to the execution of activist Steve Biko, the UN imposed a legally binding arms embargo in 1977, which France had previously opposed.

In 2017, South African researcher Hennie Van Vuuren, author of Apartheid, Guns and Money, and the NGO Open Secrets, to which he belongs, revealed, using declassified archives from the 2010s, that the French state violated the 1977 UN embargo. Under the presidencies of Giscard, Mitterrand, and Chirac (who “turned a blind eye,” according to Mediapart), France and its arms industry (notably Thomson-CSF) continued to supply arms to the apartheid regime until the early 1990s, “discreetly then clandestinely,” writes Le Monde. South Africa’s embassy in Paris housed dozens of employees of the South African arms procurement agency, Armscor, who regularly met throughout the 1980s with officials from France’s General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) to negotiate arms contracts and devise ways to bypass the UN embargo.

In 1987, the French state secretly provided South Africa, via the DGSE, several Mistral missile prototypes for testing in Angola, where it was at war (supporting the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA, a protagonist in the Angolan Civil War), even though the French army had not yet been equipped with the missile. The delivery, made via Congo-Brazzaville, was revealed in 1989 and caused a scandal in the Hexagon. Beyond purchasing French arms, South Africa’s Paris embassy served during this period as an “international hub” for the segregationist regime’s acquisition of armaments from foreign countries.

Hennie Van Vuuren denounced to Mediapart the “duplicity” of the French state and believes that “these companies and political figures became complicit in the crimes of apartheid.”

Iraq was a strategic country for economic reasons, as it was France’s top client for military equipment in 1980 and its second-largest oil supplier, but also for political reasons, as it was seen as a “bulwark” preventing the spread of Islamism in the region. Throughout the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, France continued to supply arms massively to the Iraqi state (including a total of 121 Mirage F1 aircraft delivered from January 1981). Arms sales to Iraq were consensual within the government but sparked some criticism, notably from the Trotskyist party Lutte ouvrière, which saw it as a sign of “French imperialism,” prioritizing economic benefits and political gains over the Iranian and Iraqi peoples, or from the monthly Le Monde diplomatique, which denounced the responsibility of arms dealers for the hundreds of thousands, possibly a million, deaths caused by the war. These deliveries also raised fears of repercussions for French hostages held in Lebanon by Iran’s allies, as they made France appear as an enemy of Iran, which the government denied.

In 1987, what became known as the Luchaire affair was revealed: a French company illegally delivered shells to Iran between 1982 and 1986, with the complicity of the French Ministry of Defense; the association Droit contre raison d’État sued the Luchaire company (also prosecuted by the French state for violating arms trade legislation) but was dismissed.

From 2013 to 2017, France was Egypt’s top arms supplier, which became its top client starting in 2014. The country, shaken by a revolution in 2011, saw its former dictator Hosni Mubarak replaced by President Mohamed Morsi. After another popular movement, Morsi was overthrown on July 3, 2013. He was replaced at the head of the state by Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, elected president with 96.1% of the vote in 2014 (and re-elected in 2018); he is generally considered a dictator.

In a report published in October 2018, titled “Égypte : des armes françaises au cœur de la répression” and covered by the French press, the human rights NGO Amnesty International wrote: “Repression reached its peak after the army’s ousting of President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, with security forces violently suppressing protests. Several thousand people died or were injured, and thousands of journalists, human rights defenders, and protesters were arbitrarily arrested.” The repression initially targeted the Muslim Brotherhood (and anyone suspected of belonging to it), then journalists, independent bloggers, lawyers, human rights defenders, and finally homosexual individuals, with numerous forced disappearances.

France sold four Gowind corvettes to Egypt in 2014. In 2015, the sale of twenty-four Dassault Rafale aircraft, a FREMM frigate, and missiles was announced, followed by two Mistral ships. An undetermined number—estimated at 191 by Amnesty International, which criticized the French government’s lack of transparency—of armored land vehicles (notably Sherpa and MIDS), manufactured by Renault Trucks Defense (now Arquus), was also sold to the Egyptian regime between 2012 and 2014.

According to Amnesty International’s investigations, based on photo and video analysis, French armored vehicles “were deployed by Egyptian security forces as they crushed opposition forces, killing and injuring several thousand protesters”; they were notably used by Egyptian security forces during the Rabaa al-Adawiya Square massacre (approximately 800 deaths) in August 2013, with forces firing live ammunition at protesters from the vehicles. Their use in 2015 during deadly clashes was also documented. French authorities, when questioned, stated they “only authorized the export of military equipment for counter-terrorism in the Sinai,” reported Le Monde; the al-Sisi regime is indeed a partner of the French state in this regard, prompting criticism. Despite these criticisms, 77 additional armored vehicles were delivered to Egypt in 2014.

Another report, titled “Égypte : une répression made in France,” published a few months earlier (July 2018) by four NGOs—the Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme (FIDH), the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), and the Observatoire des armements—aimed to reveal “how the French state and several French companies participated in the bloody Egyptian repression of the past five years by supplying the Abdel Fattah al-Sisi regime with military and surveillance equipment” (cf. infra).

An investigation by the media outlet Disclose, published in 2021 and based on state documents, indicates that the French General Staff promoted arms sales to the solvent military regime as early as 2013, eager to acquire them “before a new democratic power might hold it accountable.” The General Staff and Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian thus set France’s policy toward Egypt, in the name of counter-terrorism (also justifying Operation Sirli), while diplomats’ reservations at the Foreign Affairs Ministry went unheard, writes Disclose.

Since 2014, Yemen has been the scene of a civil war pitting Yemeni Shia Houthi rebels, supported by Iran (Shia), against the Yemeni government. In 2015, an international coalition of Sunni Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen to support the government—overthrown by the Houthis—through Operation “Tempête décisive.” This was followed by a permanent operation, “Restaurer l’espoir,” in which Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), two loyal French arms clients, participate. It notably involves a blockade and bombings that create a “catastrophic humanitarian situation,” close to famine, according to the United Nations in 2017.

Between 2008 and 2018, Saudi Arabia was France’s second-largest client (and France its third supplier) for armaments: over 130 CAESAR self-propelled howitzers and frigates were sold to the oil monarchy between 2012 and 2015. French arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia increased after its entry into the Yemen war. In 2015, the value of armaments delivered to the kingdom reached 899 million euros; in 2016, 1.085 billion euros; in 2017, 1.381 billion euros; and in 2018, 1.398 billion euros.

Regarding the United Arab Emirates, France delivered sixty-two Mirage 2000-9 aircraft between 1998 and 2009, as well as Nexter Leclerc tanks sold in the 1990s, whose maintenance and ammunition supply were still provided by France in 2018.

A contract named “Donas,” signed in 2014, provided for the delivery of 75 distinct military equipment items, including VAB armored vehicles, Cougar helicopters, additional CAESAR howitzers, Milan missiles, and corvettes, funded by Saudi Arabia, which officially intended to donate them to Lebanon. Ultimately, the equipment was delivered to Saudi Arabia. However, French arms industry employees testified that the equipment was designed from the outset for Yemen’s mountainous conditions, suggesting that at the time of the contract’s signing in 2014, Saudi Arabia was already planning to use it for the Yemen war.

A delivery of 155 mm munitions for the CAESAR howitzers was notably reviewed by the CIEEMG (cf. supra) in January 2017 and—following a negative opinion from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, represented by Jean-Marc Ayrault—was subject to arbitration by President François Hollande, who ultimately approved the export, despite concerns at the Quai d’Orsay of “finding French arms [...] at the site of a war crime.”

In 2016, L’Express noted that “Paris, London, and Washington, far from remaining silent on the deadly bombings by the Saudi-led coalition, continue to sell it arms.” As Saudi Arabia was accused of war crimes (bombings of hospitals, schools, etc.), NGOs demanded that France respect the Traité sur le commerce des armes, which it had signed and ratified. Several non-governmental organizations continued to protest in subsequent years.

In 2018, 79 vessels were delivered to Saudi coastguards; manufactured by the French company Chantier Naval Couach, they were “likely to participate in the Yemen blockade,” according to France Info.

In March 2018, the NGOs Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture (ACAT) and Amnesty International commissioned a law firm, whose report concluded there was “a legally high risk that arms transfers are illicit under France’s international commitments, whether under the provisions of the Traité sur le commerce des armes or the [European Union’s] Common Position,” with the state potentially becoming “complicit in war crimes committed in Yemen.” Another NGO, Aser, unsuccessfully appealed to administrative courts. A report published the following month by the Observatoire des armements, the Fédération internationale pour les droits humains, the Ligue des droits de l’homme, and Sisters Arab for Human Rights reached similar conclusions.

In April 2018, deputy Sébastien Nadot submitted a resolution requesting the opening of an inquiry into France’s role in the Yemen conflict; several dozen deputies joined him over the year, but the Foreign Affairs Committee blocked the initiative; it nevertheless created a “parliamentary mission” on the subject in November.

After the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, 2018, in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, which caused significant uproar, Germany, whose arms industry France depends on for certain spare parts, decided to suspend its arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia; French President Emmanuel Macron deemed the decision “demagogic” and refused any French embargo on the Saudi monarchy, while the United Nations warned of the “clear and present danger of an imminent and massive famine” in Yemen. Early in 2019, after Germany extended the embargo on the kingdom, France and the United Kingdom pressured—without clear success—for it to end.

In April 2019, the investigative media outlet Disclose published its first investigation on French arms in Yemen, titled “Made in France.” A confidential defense note, drafted in 2018 by the Direction du Renseignement militaire (DRM), confirmed the use of French arms in Yemen: CAESAR howitzers with a 42-kilometer range were present on the Saudi side near the border for defensive purposes but “also supported loyalist troops, backed by Saudi forces, in their advance into Yemeni territory,” leading the DRM to estimate that 437,000 people could be affected by bombings. According to the investigative outlet, 52 artillery strikes targeted areas exclusively covered by these French cannons, killing 35 civilians. Additionally, Leclerc tanks sold by France to the UAE were used in coalition offensives on Yemeni territory, according to Disclose journalists. In both cases, “contrary to Paris’s official narrative, the equipment sold to Riyadh is used offensively, not merely defensively,” analyzed Libération. Finally, two ships (the Saudi frigate Al Makkah 814 of type F 3000 S and a UAE Baynunah-class corvette) and several French-manufactured helicopters participated in the blockade of the port of Al-Hodeida, contributing “to hindering food deliveries in a country facing famine,” wrote Le Monde, or even serving a “strategy of starvation,” estimated Radio France. A third ship, a Saudi Al Madinah-class frigate, also participated in the blockade until it was disabled in January 2017; delivered in 1985, the frigate was modernized by France (Naval Group) starting in 2013.

An investigation by the Dutch media outlet Lighthouse Reports and Disclose, among others, published in September 2019, refined this information by identifying several Emirati and Saudi vessels involved in the naval blockade.

In January 2019, on France Inter, Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly stated she had “no knowledge of French arms being used directly in this conflict,” prompting Disclose to speak of a “state lie.” The journalists also noted that a new arms sale contract, named “ARTIS,” was signed between Saudi Arabia and industrialist Nexter in December 2018, while the minister claimed no negotiations were underway. Florence Parly stated she had “no evidence [...] that French arms are responsible for civilian casualties in Yemen.” According to Le Canard enchaîné journalist Claude Angeli, “France is entangled in an unacceptable war,” suggesting “co-belligerence.”

In early May, a delivery of arms intended to transit through the port of Le Havre did not ultimately take place after protests by NGOs; the CGT dockworkers’ union in Marseille stated it would refuse to load arms onto a Saudi ship. That same month, three Disclose journalists and one from Radio France’s investigative unit were summoned by the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) for “compromising national defense secrecy” following their investigation’s publication, prompting criticism from around forty journalist and editor societies, who saw it as press intimidation. Journalist Valentine Oberti and two colleagues from the show Quotidien—whose production had censored the information in their possession, according to Jean-Baptiste Rivoire—were summoned in February for a similar reason.

On September 3, 2019, a group of experts formed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report noting a “multitude of war crimes” in the Yemen conflict, committed by all belligerents. It questioned the legality of arms transfers by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States to coalition countries and “urgently [called on third states] to refrain from providing arms that could be used in the conflict.”

In 2007, through intermediary Ziad Takieddine, the French company Amesys sold Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship, a mass telecommunications surveillance technology using deep packet inspection (DPI), commercially named Eagle, as revealed in 2011 by Reflets.info, then OWNI, The Wall Street Journal, and Mediapart; it enabled spying on the entire Libyan population, ultimately leading to the arrest and torture of civilians. The Sherpa association filed a complaint in September 2011, followed by the Fédération internationale pour les droits humains (FIDH) and the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH), suing for “complicity in acts of torture in Libya.” “To say the complaint was received cautiously is an understatement,” wrote Le Monde: an investigation was opened by an investigating judge but against the Paris prosecutor’s wishes (on the orders of the general prosecutor).

While the Secrétariat général de la Défense et de la Sécurité nationale (SGDSN) confirmed to OWNI in August 2011 that an authorization from the Commission interministérielle pour l’étude des exportations de matériels de guerre (CIEEMG) is in principle required “for electronic warfare products,” the Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson stated the following month to Le Monde that the Eagle software “is not subject to export control,” while the SGDSN specified to OWNI that Eagle “is neither on the French list of ‘materials subject to a special export procedure’ nor on the European list of ‘dual-use goods and technologies.’”

In 2012, FIDH and LDH denounced another French company, Qosmos, under confidential-defense status, claiming it sold a similar system to Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime; Télérama journalist Olivier Tesquet highlighted a legal vacuum regarding the export of digital arms, with the SGDSN stating that the CIEEMG is not competent “in the field of computer surveillance systems.” A judicial investigation was opened, while the company maintained it had withdrawn from the commercial project and that “none of its equipment or software was ever operational in Syria.” Qosmos had also contributed to Amesys’s Eagle software in 2007, though its technology was not ultimately operational in Libya.

Bull (Amesys’s parent company) and Qosmos benefited from public investments from the Fonds stratégique d’investissement (FSI).

In July 2017, Télérama published new revelations: “the company Amesys changed its name and shareholder to sell its services to the new Egyptian power”—that of dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi—with the tacit consent of the French state. In 2014, an emissary from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ordered from Stéphane Salies, a former employee and new owner of Amesys (replaced by two companies, Nexa Technologies and Advanced Middle East Systems), a surveillance system for Egypt; it was an updated version of the Eagle software, named Cerebro, delivered to Egyptian intelligence services. When Stéphane Salies requested an export license from the Commission interministérielle des biens à double usage (Cibdu) in July 2014, it declined to rule, neither prohibiting nor authorizing it. However, in 2016 and 2017, Nexa Technologies obtained nine export licenses. “If the state had promised more transparency and guarantees after the Libyan affair, this new case acts as a cruel revealer of control deficiencies,” estimates journalist Olivier Tesquet, while FIDH and LDH expressed concern over this sale “to a country where human rights violations are constant.” A judicial investigation was opened in December for “complicity in acts of torture and forced disappearances.”

In November 2017, Reflets.info revealed that Amesys had also sold an Internet traffic surveillance system to Morocco in 2010, with functionalities enhanced in 2012 by the two companies succeeding Amesys, Nexa Technologies and Advanced Middle East Systems. This was despite recurring criticism from human rights NGOs regarding Morocco; “Business as usual,” wrote Libération journalist Amaelle Guiton.

In March 2018, Télérama discovered that another French company, Ercom—which supplies cybersecurity technologies to the Élysée, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and the Defense Ministry, and benefits from 18 million euros in public funding from Bpifrance, FSI’s successor—“equips the authoritarian Egyptian regime with mass surveillance systems.” Its subsidiary Suneris includes around forty employees “cleared for defense secrecy, [who] work on mass surveillance systems sold abroad: in Ivory Coast, Mali, Gabon, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia.” Financed again by the UAE, the telephone call and SMS interception technology was delivered in 2014 to Egyptian military intelligence after receiving an export authorization from the Cibdu.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the media outlets Disclose, Le Nouvel Obs, and the NGO Observatoire des armements revealed that France circumvented the EU embargo on arms exports to Russia, imposed following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, by exploiting several loopholes, notably the ability to honor contracts predating the embargo.

Between 2015 and 2021, French companies supplied Russia with over 150 million euros worth of components used in its armaments, and some deliveries only ceased in August 2022, six months after the Russian invasion. Among other components, Thales and Safran delivered thermal cameras for the targeting systems of Russian tanks used in Crimea as early as 2014 and still used in Ukraine in 2022; Thales also supplied several components (including TACAN systems) equipping Sukhoi Su-30 jets, responsible for numerous bombings in Ukraine, while Safran—which also opened factories in Russia—equipped Kamov Ka-52 helicopters, and Lynred provided optics for Orlan-10 drones, active in the Ukrainian theater. The effective presence of some of these French-made components in Russian armaments used in Ukraine was established before and after 2022.

Starting in 2023, in the context of the Israel-Hamas war, during which raids and bombings by the IDF in the Gaza Strip caused thousands of civilian casualties, potentially constituting genocide, arms sales by France to Israel and the lack of transparency surrounding them drew criticism. According to the Rapport au Parlement 2024 sur les exportations d’armement de la France, France delivered 30 million euros worth of military equipment—without specifying their exact nature, and with the Ministry of the Armed Forces unable to confirm whether these deliveries occurred before or after the war’s onset—and granted 176 million euros in export licenses to Israel, some of which were later suspended.

According to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the delivered arms are solely for Israel’s defense, and France does not export offensive weapons to the Hebrew State. However, successive revelations by the media outlets Disclose and Marsactu contradict this claim. The French company Eurolinks delivered to Israel in March 2024 ammunition links for 5.56 mm caliber, likely intended for IMI Negev machine guns used by the Israeli army, although France only granted a license for re-export. In June 2024, Thales delivered to the Israeli company Elbit Systems two transponders equipping its Hermes 900 drone, a model involved in bombing civilian targets in the Palestinian enclave and suspected of bombing Khan Younis hospital in February 2024; according to Thales, these transponders were actually re-exported.

The use of corrupting intermediaries who, in turn, pay commissions to foreign public officials to persuade state decision-makers to purchase armaments is criticized. Until the transposition of the OECD Anti-Corruption Convention into French law in 2000, these commissions were legal in France (though not necessarily in the recipient country). However, they sometimes led to retro-commissions, which are illegal, benefiting French personalities or political parties.

Particularly from the 1970s, these commissions were ubiquitous; “corruption plagued [then] arms sales,” writes journalist Anne Poiret, while her colleague Jean Guisnel speaks of “massive corruption.” Christian Mons-Catoni, former president of the Conseil des industries de défense françaises (CIDEF), representing the arms industry, testified: “Before the 2000s, corruption sometimes exceeded 15% [of the contract value]! These were questionable, reprehensible but ‘official’ commercial practices.” Indeed, until the end of the century, commissions, officially termed “exceptional commercial expenses” (FCE), were eligible for tax deductions after declaration and approval by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Former Defense Minister (1991-1993) Pierre Joxe deplored their existence to Anne Poiret: “The arms trade is one of the areas where corruption is most developed. Ultimately, purchasing decisions are made by lone individuals—heads of state or one of their close associates, often the defense minister. [...] A small commission [of 2%] can bring in a lot of money. [...] France has been very active in this area.” A company registered in a tax haven was created to “provide an appropriate vehicle for corrupting UAE officials,” according to GIAT itself.

In arms exports, suspicions are regularly raised about the existence of retro-commissions enabling the illegal enrichment of industrialists and French personalities or political parties, including with public funds, though the judiciary has never been able to establish this.

Several politico-financial scandals linked to French arms sales involve commissions and potential retro-commissions, notably:

• The Karachi affair: The 1994 sale to Pakistan of three Agosta-class submarines built by DCN (now Naval Group), facilitated by the Société française d’exportation de matériel militaire et aéronautique (Sofma; an arms agency), involved commissions (then legal) that businessmen were to pay to “officials, ministers, military personnel, and members of Pakistani security services,” reports Libération. The sale of three Lafayette-class military frigates to Saudi Arabia the same year also involved commissions.

After the 2002 Karachi attack, former Prime Minister Édouard Balladur (1993-1995) and his associates were accused by French justice of benefiting from retro-commissions to fund his 1995 presidential election campaign.

• The Taiwan frigates affair: In August 1991, France sold six F-3000 frigates (derived from the Lafayette class) to Taiwan for 15.6 billion francs (approximately 2.8 billion dollars), split between Thomson-CSF and the public company DCN; Article 18 of the contract prohibited any commission payments to intermediaries. However, French industrialists paid 600 million dollars to a Taiwanese intermediary tasked with bribing compatriots. The purchasing country discovered this, and after a 2010 arbitration ruling, obtained a 630-million-euro refund, with 17% paid by Thomson-CSF and 73% by French taxpayers. The affair also raised suspicions of retro-commissions benefiting French individuals; the investigation, led by investigating judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, failed to prove this, concluding with a non-prosecution in 2008. Journalist Jean Guisnel wrote: “The political class united to prevent the magistrate from accessing classified defense documents that might have allowed him to identify potential beneficiaries of illegal commissions.” Van Ruymbeke denounced the state’s use of defense secrecy to block his access. A decade later, he testified to the difficulties in such cases: “Each time, the judge’s work is hindered by defense secrecy. He does not have access to the necessary information.” The Taiwan frigates affair was also marked by an assassination and several suspicious deaths.

The transposition of the OECD Anti-Corruption Convention into French law in June 2000, effective September 29 of the same year, ended the legality of commissions, creating the offense of active corruption of foreign public officials. The use of intermediaries remains possible, provided their compensation is traceable and does not serve as bribes to third parties. According to some observers, this was a major setback for the French arms industry, disadvantaged compared to competitors from countries that did not renounce corruption.

According to Challenges, commissions paid to intermediaries are now much lower and better controlled; in 2010, bribes, while not entirely eliminated, were rarer. Journalist Romain Mielcarek notes a practice prevalent in the 2010s: “billing for fake studies through consulting firms” serving as commissions or retro-commissions.

Anne Poiret notes in 2019 that “de facto ‘affairs’ have continued to dominate the legal headlines”. Among these, the sale of two Scorpene-class submarines and one Agosta-class submarine to Malaysia in 2002 by DCN and Thales is suspected by the French and Malaysian courts of having involved the payment of kickbacks to the Malaysian Defense Minister at the time, Najib Razak, via one of his advisors, Abdul Razak Baginda; several former French executives of DCN and Thales are under investigation for corruption (which they deny) between 2015 and 2017. The affair was triggered by the 2006 murder of a Mongolian interpreter, Razak Baginda's mistress.

In the 1970s, the French churches, both Protestant and Catholic, were critical of the importance of arms exports in France. Trade unions such as the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT) also condemned France's export policy at this time, particularly when arms were delivered to undemocratic countries, but attached importance to jobs in the armaments industry and called for the sector to be reconverted.

During the 2010 decade, France's Catholic Church appears divided on the issue, reports La Croix.

• Mitterrand–Pasqua affair
• Defense industrial base
• Economy of France
• Direction générale de l'armement
• Arms industry

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• Frémeaux, Jacques (2007). "La France et les exportations d'armements au Proche-Orient de la fin de la guerre d'Algérie à la première guerre du Golfe" [France and arms exports to the Middle East from the end of the Algerian War to the First Gulf War]. Historical Review of the Armed Forces (in French) (246).
• Guematcha, Emmanuel (2016). "La réglementation internationale du commerce international des armes classiques : le traité du 2 avril 2013 et la protection de la personne" [International regulation of the international trade in conventional arms: The treaty of April 2, 2013, and the protection of individuals]. Quebec Journal of International Law (in French). 29 (2). Quebec Society of International Law: 75–109.
• Klein, Jean (1976). "Commerce des armes et politique : le cas français" [Arms trade and politics: The French case]. Foreign Policy (in French). 41 (6). Center for Foreign Policy Studies: 563–586.

• Guisnel, Jean (February 2011). Armes de corruption massive : Secrets et combines des marchands de canons [Weapons of mass corruption: Secrets and schemes of arms dealers] (in French). Paris: La Découverte. p. 396. ISBN 9782707153074.
• Hébert, Jean-Paul; Vaïsse, Maurice (2002). "Les exportations françaises d'armement au début de la Ve République : la mise en place des éléments d'une politique" [French arms exports at the beginning of the Fifth Republic: The establishment of policy elements]. In Vaïsse, Maurice (ed.). Armement et Ve République [Armament and the Fifth Republic] (in French). Paris: CNRS Éditions. p. 393. ISBN 9782271060112.
• Mielcarek, Romain (June 2017). Marchands d'armes : Enquête sur un business français [Arms dealers: Investigation into a French business] (in French). Paris/14-Condé-sur-Noireau: Éditions Tallandier. p. 112. ISBN 9791021026087.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
• Poiret, Anne (May 2019). Mon pays vend des armes [My country sells weapons] (in French). Paris: Les Arènes. p. 304. ISBN 978-2-7112-0106-8.
• Serfati, Claude (2017). Le Militaire : une histoire française [The military: A French history] (in French). Paris: Éditions Amsterdam. p. 224. ISBN 978-2-35480-150-2. OCLC 986787087.

• Observatoire économique de la défense (2010). "Annuaire statistique de la défense 2009-2010" [Defense Statistical Yearbook 2009-2010] (PDF) (in French). General Secretariat for Administration. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 June 2021.
• Observatoire économique de la défense (2013). "Annuaire statistique de la défense 2012-2013" [Defense Statistical Yearbook 2012-2013] (PDF) (in French). General Secretariat for Administration.
• Observatoire économique de la défense (2014). "Annuaire statistique de la défense 2013-2014" [Defense Statistical Yearbook 2013-2014] (PDF) (in French). General Secretariat for Administration.
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• Poiret, Anne (October 2018). Mon pays fabrique des armes [My country makes weapons] (Documentary) (in French). Talweg and France Télévisions. Event occurs at 72 minutes.
• Jousset, Alexandra (2019). Crimes de guerre au Yémen - Les complicités européennes [War crimes in Yemen - European complicity] (Documentary) (in French). Arte and CAPA Presse. Event occurs at 55 minutes.
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