{"id":36094,"date":"2026-06-14T06:59:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T06:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/36094\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T06:59:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T06:59:40","slug":"berlin-declares-franco-german-fighter-jet-project-dead-in-blow-to-macron-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/36094\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin declares Franco-German fighter jet project dead in blow to Macron \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The stalemate\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/france-germany-future-combat-air-system-project-fighter-jets-defense\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">deepened last summer<\/a>\u00a0when Dassault, the maker of France&#8217;s Rafale fighter, pushed to take the lead in building the FCAS fighter. Airbus would be treated as a subcontractor with limited visibility into the design, while Dassault would be able to select suppliers, decide on sharing out the project work and act as the sole interface with customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Airbus rejected the approach as a fundamental break with the joint agreement that launched FCAS, arguing it would turn a European cooperative program into a French-led fighter supported by German and Spanish funding and industrial competencies.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>By September,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/germany-france-europe-fighter-jet-defense-aviation\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">POLITICO reported<\/a>\u00a0that Berlin was starting to look for other options, including teaming up with Sweden or joining the rival GCAP program.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Adding to the industrial dispute, Paris and Berlin also differed over the fighter\u2019s weight, with France wanting a lighter jet for aircraft carriers, while Germany pushed for a heavier one for air-superiority roles. Eventually, Berlin proposed building two aircraft \u2014\u00a0an option Paris rejected.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In March, Merz and Macron\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/france-germany-agree-give-next-generation-fighter-fcas-one-last-chance\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">agreed<\/a>\u00a0to give the project one last chance, but those talks failed to overcome deep differences. <\/p>\n<p>On Monday, the German chancellery informed Airbus of the decision to pull the plug.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.latribune.fr\/article\/defense-aerospatiale\/defense\/2554979114223914\/le-scaf-cest-bel-et-bien-fini\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">According to La Tribune<\/a>, Merz will make the decision official on Wednesday at the opening of the ILA air show in Berlin.<\/p>\n<p>Laura Kayali reported from Paris. Clea Caulcutt contributed to this report from Paris. <\/p>\n<p>This article has been updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The stalemate\u00a0deepened last summer\u00a0when Dassault, the maker of France&#8217;s Rafale fighter, pushed to take the lead in building&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,7000,420,421,2127,60,393,5,422,5388,156],"class_list":["post-36094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-cloud","tag-defense","tag-drones","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-france","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-military-aviation","tag-multinational-defense-programs","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}