TLDR: To manage a modern high-intensity conflict, stockpiles and manufacturing volume are key, something France has been neglecting. So it may be less lack of ambition and goodwill than a lack of means.
IFRI points to a study by itself published in l'Express (paywall, so couldn't read the study itself, just their synopsis).
Basically, they claim:
France has cut its military spending by a lot in recent years.
and contrary to other countries, for example Germany, it does not hang on to obsolete mothballed equipment, so it has little to donate.
Stockpiles “generally disappeared between 2007 and 2016,” notes the think tank, dismantled or resold. The end of the Cold War, the abolition of compulsory military service and successive budgetary reforms led the French armed forces to carry out slimming treatments, starting in the 1990s. But it was especially after the financial crisis of 2008 that the ministry had to make savings at all costs, to the point of closing its reserves
Why such a difference ? In recent years, France has tended to get rid of equipment taken out of service very quickly, so as to no longer have to finance their maintenance, whereas other States have kept this equipment for longer. This is what reveals a new study from the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), “Stocks, high-intensity life insurance”. As a result, Paris's room for maneuver in supplying weapons to kyiv is weaker than others.
The case of the Gepard anti-aircraft armored vehicles delivered by Germany illustrates this difference. These languished for almost a decade before being repackaged and delivered to kyiv. Ifri believes that France could have done the same with its AMX-10P, infantry vehicles equipped with a cannon, definitively withdrawn from service only seven years ago. But these “seem to have completely disappeared from inventories”, “including around a hundred modernized examples” between 2006 and 2008 and which could “have been transferred to Ukraine”.
To which I would also add that France manufactures a lot of its military equipment. They do that to keep a domestic weapon industry going, but do on short production runs. If the gear in question did not do that well in export, then the production line may very well have been shut and there is no way to quickly replace donated equipment. This is the situation the UK was in when donating a few Challenger 2s: they only have 240-ish and the production line has long been shut. Yes, they'll eventually get Challenger 3s, but until then...
Similarly 155mm shell manufacturing capacity (1000/mo) looks good on paper to supply a peacetime force. Less so to supply a combat zone where 3-5k rounds can be fired each day.
While at the start of the conflict, France produced 1,000 155 mm shells per month, it increased from 2,000 last April to reach 3,000 in January 2024.
In contrast, a country like Poland buys tanks from the US and South Korea, both of which still produce them. It becomes a question of balancing the short term risks until replenishment: Russia is busy for now.
Capital magazine claims that French aid will ramp up in 2024 but is more concerned with costs than capacity.
Last, but not least, when it comes to hard military matters, besides flexing muscles in Africa, French politicians and its public can often be charitably described as "cautious" * (which made Macron's NATO troops remarks all the more odd).
* not a bad thing in 2003.
