MANILA — France will deploy a small contingent of 15 to 20 personnel to take part in this year’s Balikatan exercises with the Philippine military, its ambassador said.

At a press conference on April 13, French Ambassador to the Philippines Marie Fontanel said the deployment is smaller than originally planned, as French forces were redirected due to developments in the Middle East.

“We were hoping to have a large deployment that included the Jeanne d’Arc coming to the Philippines on the occasion of Balikatan. The deployment was requested to stay in Europe and not far from the Middle East, considering the current situation,” Fontanel said.

“We will still participate, not to the level we wanted, but we will participate in Balikatan this year and probably again in the years to come,” she added.

Fontanel said the French contingent will still mark a shift from observer status to active participation following the signing of a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between France and the Philippines in March 2026.

France’s defense attaché, Capt. Stephan Litzler, said Paris had initially planned to send the Jeanne d’Arc amphibious task group to join joint all-domain operations in Palawan.

With the cancellation of that deployment, French involvement will now focus on coordination roles rather than field maneuvers.

Litzler said the contingent will be assigned to headquarters functions in Palawan and will also participate in the cyber defense phase of the exercise in Manila.

The team, which includes liaison officers, aims to gain technical insights and better understand how the Philippine military conducts its training operations.

“We can continue getting the operational intimacy and continue to have perspectives in terms of participation in further iterations of either Balikatan or other types of exercise,” he said.

France previously joined the 2024 Balikatan exercises as an observer, but has since expanded defense engagement with the Philippines through maritime and aerial drills.

The VFA between Manila and Paris, signed in Paris last month, formalizes the presence of French forces during joint activities.

France is the first European country to enter into such an agreement with the Philippines. Other countries with similar arrangements include the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, while Japan has a comparable deal through a Reciprocal Access Agreement.

Fontanel said the agreement is expected to deepen military cooperation between the two countries.

“The more we do, the better for this operational intimacy that we want to create together. So we want to continue, of course, doing that, and the good thing with the visiting forces agreement is that naturally it will foster and make it like a reflex to intensify the number of those interactions,” she said.