France and Germany abandon joint project to build European fighter jet

Scale models of the fighter jet which was to have formed part of Europe’s Future Combat Air System. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters View image in fullscreen Scale models of the fighter jet which was to have formed part of Europe’s Future Combat Air System. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters France and Germany abandon joint project to build European fighter jet Paris and Berlin conclude firms involved unable to agree on way forward in blow to Europe’s common defence push France and Germany have concluded that the companies involved in building a joint fighter jet will not be able to reach an agreement and have abandoned the project, officials in Berlin have said in a blow to Europe’s common defence efforts. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had “reached the shared assessment that the companies will not be able to come together”, an official told Agence France-Presse. “They acknowledge this reality.” Marcon and Merz’s predecessor, Angela Merkel, launched the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) in 2017 to replace France’s Rafale jets and the Eurofighter used by Germany and Spain by about 2040. But the €100bn project has long been dogged by disagreements between the companies involved, France’s Dassault Aviation and the European aerospace group Airbus, representing German and Spanish interests, over leadership and control of the development programme. Dassault reportedly insisted on being the lead partner in the jet’s development in order to protect its intellectual property, while Airbus pushed for a more equal partnership involving significant technology transfers. Paris and Berlin were also understood to be at loggerheads over the type of jet, with France seeking a single European model but Germany saying its needs were not the same because French planes needed to carry nuclear weapons and land on aircraft carriers. Merz has previously openly questioned whether developing a crewed sixth-generation fighter jet still makes sense for his country’s air force, and has insisted EU member states do not all have the same military hardware requirements. The abandonment of the FCAS project represents a heavy blow to efforts by European countries to cooperate more closely on defence after decades of underinvestment and faced with a hostile Russia and an increasingly unreliable US. France and Germany agreed to build the fighter jet of the future. Now they can’t agree who is in charge Read more The programme includes the jet fighter at the heart of the disagreement, but also drones and a high-security combat data cloud. European sources told Reuters it was possible the development of the latter two elements could continue. A German government source also told AFP: “The actual core of FCAS is to be continued as a European system,” describing it as a “nervous system that networks aircraft, drones and other components into an integrated whole”. Macron’s office did not immediately comment. With French elections sche