How France is turning into a problem for EU and what it means for Ukraine
France is no longer just navigating a political crisis, it’s exporting one.
The French Parliament, meanwhile, has been in a state of permanent deadlock since the snap legislative elections of 2024. With no party or alliance holding a majority, successive governments have been unable to pass basic reform.
This disintegration at the top has real consequences across Europe. A politically paralysed France is no longer a reliable engine for the EU’s agenda.
Read more about what is happening and how it affects Ukraine in the article by French journalist Charlotte Guillou-Clerc: Macron between bad and worse: how France's turmoil affects Ukraine and Europe.
France, once central to European integration, defence, and Ukraine strategy, is now consumed by domestic turmoil.
In Washington, Berlin, Warsaw and Rome, Paris is increasingly seen as "unpartnerable," according to senior analysts at the German Marshall Fund and the Centre for European Reform.
Rome’s Giorgia Meloni is stepping in to lead the EU’s southern flank, particularly on migration and enlargement. In the East, Poland and the Baltics are shaping defence planning around Ukraine with or without Paris.
Even within the "Coalition of the Willing", the Franco-British-led group backing Ukraine, France’s voice is fading due to its limited material contributions and political paralysis.
As one senior French diplomat anonymously told Carnegie Europe, "We used to set the tempo. Now we’re playing catch-up; if we’re lucky enough to be in the room."
If France, the EU’s only nuclear power and the bloc’s permanent voice on the UN Security Council, keeps its commitments, these targets are achievable. But today, those symbolic assets are dismissed by political uncertainty.
Meanwhile, Germany has pledged over €22 billion, while France total allocations remain under €8 billion, a gap that cannot be explained by economic capacity alone.
While part of this insufficiency is rooted in France’s immediate fiscal constraints and instability, the deeper concern in Brussels is political continuity.
With Macron weakened and no clear successor within the centrist camp, if the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) wins the 2027 presidential election, it could trigger a strategic rupture in EU policy.
Marine Le Pen has already refused to define Russia as an aggressor state, and her party has regularly opposed France’s arms deliveries to Ukraine.
For Moscow, a France consumed by infighting and constrained by debt is a strategic gift. It weakens the EU’s eastern posture, discourages smaller states, and potentially opens a breach in the front of European deterrence.
If France retreats from the geopolitical frontline, Russia faces fewer constraints and more opportunities, in Ukraine, and beyond.
France’s crisis is now a European problem.
Paris can no longer set the pace in Brussels. That matters for Ukraine. Ukraine needs shells, money, diplomatic support and training.
If France, the EU’s only nuclear power and the bloc’s permanent voice on the UN Security Council, keeps its commitments, these targets are achievable. If it doesn’t, deadlines will slip, coordination will suffer, and Russia will gain an opening.
This absence of leadership left room for others to take the lead. Berlin on industry and funding, Warsaw and the Baltics on deterrence, Rome on migration and enlargement.
If Paris keeps looking inward, Europe’s centre of gravity will keep shifting east and south.