Berlin/ParisReuters —
The leaders of Germany and France have agreed to halt a landmark project to develop and manufacture a new generation of fighter jets, bowing to industrial tensions over Europe’s most ambitious defense plan, officials said Monday.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the troubled project on the sidelines of the EU-Western Balkans summit in Montenegro last week and concluded there was no prospect of resolving the months-long impasse between weapons companies involved in the project, German officials said.
For this reason, Mr. Merz advised Mr. Macron not to proceed with the construction of a joint fighter jet any further.
Macron’s office said the two had discussed the project at length and regretted that key industry partners – Airbus, the European aerospace group representing Germany and Spain, and France’s Dassault Aviation – could not reach an agreement.
The decision to end the core of Europe’s biggest defense project comes as Western military officials warn of a growing Russian threat and the United States ramps up pressure on Europe to rearm.
Macron launched the project with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2017 and has championed it for months. The Prime Minister’s Office said France believes that Franco-German defense cooperation remains necessary for both countries and their European partners.
But the failure to reach an agreement on the 100 billion euro ($116 billion) project, which also includes Spain, underscores the struggle Europe has faced rebuilding its military after decades of underinvestment.
“It’s not an ideal signal for either Washington or Russia,” said Douglas Barry, senior military aerospace researcher at the IISS think tank.
The project, which centers on a core fighter aircraft supported by unmanned aerial vehicles and linked by a classified “combat cloud,” has been in doubt for months as the two countries have quarreled over specifications and controls.
European officials briefed on the matter said the two countries were working toward a face-saving solution, and that systems outside the core fighter, such as the highly secure link “combat cloud,” would continue to be developed under the same name, Future Combat Air System (FCAS).
The compromise is largely symbolic, as FCAS is a generic name for such systems and is not specific to the program, but officials have been exploring ways to allow Macron to part with the core fighter without declaring a halt to the entire project.
Mr. Macron and Mr. Merz spent months trying to salvage the project and overcome differences with Airbus and Dassault.
There was no immediate comment from the companies, but Germany’s IG Metall union said it welcomed the decision to end the project, saying it had been clear for months that Dassault and Airbus could not work together on an equal footing.
“I would like to thank Friedrich Merz for taking this difficult but necessary decision, which is in the interests of Germany as an aviation hub and of our workforce,” IG Metall Vice Chairman Jürgen Körner said in a statement.
In addition to disputes over control of the next stage of development and access to intellectual property, the two sides had very different requirements for the aircraft.
The rift over the core fighter jet mirrors France’s decision to withdraw from the Eurofighter in the 1980s and follows years of increasingly public spat between Dassault and Airbus.
“SCAF has been on life support for three years,” said Francis Tusa, a UK-based defense analyst, referring to the project’s French acronym.
Merz has publicly questioned whether developing a manned sixth-generation fighter still makes sense for his country’s air force, saying Germany does not need nuclear-capable jets that can land on aircraft carriers.
