Germany and France are taking the first practical steps towards cooperation on nuclear deterrence, with a French Rafale fighter jet capable of carrying atomic weapons and a German Eurofighter set to be refuelled jointly at N\u00f6rvenich air base near Cologne on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The move was announced shortly before a meeting between German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron at Bensberg Castle near Cologne.<\/p>\n
The exercise at N\u00f6rvenich marks the start of the implementation of a nuclear deterrence partnership between Germany and France, agreed by Merz and Macron in early March.<\/p>\n
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The Franco-German defence and security council convenes at the air base on Friday with a focus on deepening the cooperation, including an expected decision on the participation of German soldiers in a French nuclear exercise for the first time later this year.<\/p>\n
Macron offered European partners the option of coming under France’s nuclear umbrella years ago. France is the only EU country to possess nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
US nuclear bombs are currently stationed in Germany as part of NATO’s nuclear deterrence, with the German air force providing fighter jets for their potential deployment in an emergency.<\/p>\n
The cooperation with France is intended to complement and strengthen NATO’s deterrence.<\/p>\n
Discussions at N\u00f6rvenich are also expected on the establishment of the multinational force for Ukraine and the way forward following the virtual collapse of the joint FCAS fighter jet project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany and France are taking the first practical steps towards cooperation on nuclear deterrence, with a French Rafale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[63476,112,230,63477,12937,235,190,63478,10899,18806],"class_list":["post-130503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-atomic-weapons","tag-berlin","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-exercise","tag-fighter-jet","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-joint-exercise","tag-nato-countries","tag-nuclear-deterrence"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116930021024289250","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}