French Ambassador Hélène Farnaud-Defromont says France supports European procurement autonomy while remaining open to working with Canada on defence procurement.
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France’s new ambassador in Ottawa says her country is open to working closer with Canada on defence procurement, even as France pushes for Europe to build a more autonomous arms industry.
French Ambassador Hélène Farnaud-Defromont said that in “the defence sector and in other equally strategic sectors,” France advocates for a “European preference in procurement.” She said the “ideal” is to reach “100 per cent European content” for procurement, but added that reaching that goal will take time.
Farnaud-Defromont said France can help Canada strengthen its defence industrial base by sharing best practices. She said France is the only EU member state that has retained “a comprehensive defence industrial and technological base,” and she described ideas for joint development.
Canada became the first non-European partner to join an EU loan programme for joint defence projects called Security Action for Europe, or SAFE, in February. The envoy said she views Canada’s participation as positive, adding that “we now need to see things come to fruition” and that “we need this partnership to actually take shape.”
SAFE provides EU countries with access to low-interest loans to buy military equipment and weapons. The programme is part of the initiative ReArm Europe, which is aimed at reducing European reliance on American weapons.
Farnaud-Defromont also said her country’s procurement includes a high proportion of European-origin components. She said 65 per cent of the components in each piece of defence equipment France procures are of European origin, a threshold the EU is trying to apply to SAFE projects.
She did not speculate on how Europe’s integration of defence production could affect Canada’s role in SAFE, citing uncertainty around how continental integration would translate into procurement.
On the conflict in Ukraine, Farnaud-Defromont said people in France are “extremely concerned and worried” about the war and its implications for freedom across Europe. She said France feels the war’s proximity, saying that the “front line is just a few hundred kilometres from Paris.”
Farnaud-Defromont said France is still working toward peace through multilateralism, describing the international order as “profoundly disrupted.”
In discussing Europe’s approach to security, she said France remains committed to developing, within the EU and within NATO, a European pillar and a strategic European community. She also said France is “by no means pleased” with what she described as confusion within NATO.
The discussion comes after Kerry Buck, a former Canadian ambassador to NATO, cautioned in a June 2025 commentary that Canada could be less safe if the alliance’s focus shifts more toward defending Europe. Buck said Canada resisted the creation of a European pillar within NATO and warned against the EU exercising “strategic autonomy” in decision-making.
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