Hollande to Trim French Army as Defense Spending Is Frozen
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President Francois Hollande plans to trim the size of the French army while keeping annual defense spending roughly unchanged over a decade as his government seeks savings while retaining military capacity.
The army will be reduced in size to about 66,000 deployable soldiers by 2019, down from about 80,000, according to proposals published by the government today. Spending will be held at about 30 billion euros ($39 billion) annually.