BERLIN\/PARIS, April 22 (Reuters) – Germany and France’s defence ministers offered differing timelines on Wednesday for a decision on the Franco\u2011German FCAS fighter \u200cjet project, with one saying the two countries’ leaders would decide \u200csoon and the other saying mediators had sought more time to discuss the matter.<\/p>\n
Plans to develop \u200ba futuristic air combat system together with Spain are hanging by a thread amid a public dispute over control between France’s Dassault Aviation and Airbus, which represents Germany and Spain in the 100 billion euro ($117 billion) project.<\/p>\n
Mediators had sought \u200cto resolve the dispute by \u2060April 18, but those efforts appeared to have failed, leaving it ultimately in the hands of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz \u2060and French President Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n
“The decision rests with the heads of state,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters. “I expect a decision to be made this \u200bweek on \u200bhow to proceed.”<\/p>\n
Merz and Macron are due \u200bto meet this week during \u200ca European summit in Cyprus.<\/p>\n
But French Defence Minister Catherine Vautrin said during a parliamentary hearing that mediators, one from each country, had asked for more time.<\/p>\n
“They were due to deliver their conclusions, to be precise, on 18 April. They requested an additional 10 days,” Vautrin said.<\/p>\n
The dispute centres on leadership of \u200cthe core fighter element of plans to \u200bbuild an interconnected fleet of crewed planes and \u200barmed drones under a common \u200bdigital umbrella.<\/p>\n
Insiders expect Germany and France to abandon development of \u200cthe joint fighter jet but continue \u200bcooperation on drones \u200band the so-called combat cloud, or digital backbone. But rowing back the plan is seen as politically awkward for Macron.<\/p>\n
Vautrin said there were three \u200bkey issues: intellectual property, \u200cthe allocation of responsibilities, referred to as workshare, and concerns regarding \u200bairworthiness certification.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8525 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold and John Irish; Editing \u200bby Miranda Murray and Hugh Lawson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN\/PARIS, April 22 (Reuters) – Germany and France’s defence ministers offered differing timelines on Wednesday for a decision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6518,6519,2127,3243,393,587,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-6667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-catherine-vautrin","9":"tag-dassault-aviation","10":"tag-emmanuel-macron","11":"tag-fighter-jet","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-german-chancellor","14":"tag-germany"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6667","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=6667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}