Macron awards Legion of Honor to UKs Starmer at final Bastille Day parade as French president
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Macron awards Legion of Honor to UKs Starmer at final Bastille Day parade as French president
Macron stages final Bastille Day parade in Paris with European leaders backing Ukraine
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French President Emmanuel Macron presented the Legion of Honor, France's highest award, to outgoing UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on July 14, 2026. The ceremony took place during the annual Bastille Day military parade in central Paris, which was attended by other Ukraine allies.
The Bastille Day parade began at 10:21 a.m. with nine Alphajets from the Patrouille de France flying over the Champs-Élysées in a tight formation, trailing blue, white, and red smoke. Behind them came two Mirage 2000B two-seaters carrying Ukrainian co-pilots trained in France.
The ceremony had begun half an hour earlier on the Place de la Concorde, where Macron greeted Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu before reviewing the troops from a command car with Gen. Fabien Mandon, the chief of the defense staff. In the presidential stand sat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the guest of honor, and about 30 heads of state and government, among them German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich.
“Today on the Champs-Élysées, we celebrate liberty, France’s cherished heritage,” von der Leyen wrote on X. “I thank France for its commitment, for the French army is the strength of Europe and protects the liberty of our entire Union.”
The parade was Macron’s 10th and last National Day parade as commander in chief before he leaves office in 2027. The theme of the parade was “The Strategic Awakening of Europe.” A record 6,686 troops marched on foot, with 98 aircraft, 33 helicopters, 315 vehicles, and 193 horses of the Republican Guard. More than 50,000 spectators watched from the avenue in scorching heat.
The parade was designed to show the French what a decade of rising budgets had bought in soldiers, vehicles, aircraft, and technology. The Élysée Palace called the two-hour display “strategic signaling.” Aircraft flew with mock munitions under their wings and helicopters passed above tanks to mimic a modern battlefield, both parade firsts. The flypast unfolded in seven sequences, 84 French aircraft and 11 foreign ones.
Starmer is the first UK prime minister to receive the Legion d'honneur award. The outgoing prime minister, 63, attended the annual July 14 military parade in central Paris as a guest of Macron, alongside other Ukraine allies.
In addition to the military display, the parade included a moment of remembrance for the victims of the Nice terror attack, which occurred ten years ago on July 14, 2016. French President Emmanuel Macron attended a solemn ceremony in Nice to mark the anniversary of the attack, which killed 86 people and injured more than 400.
The event also included a reception at the French Embassy in Bucharest, where interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan was in attendance.
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