BERLIN, June 8 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron have concluded that the companies involved in building \u200ca joint fighter jet are unable to reach an agreement, two \u200cGerman government officials told Reuters on Monday.<\/p>\n
Both leaders agreed that the countries involved in the \u200bproject known as Future Combat Air System, or FCAS, would continue to develop a related drone system and data network, the sources added.<\/p>\n
Macron’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Failure to reach an agreement on the \u20ac100-billion ($116 \u200cbillion) project underscores the struggles \u2060Europe has faced in rebuilding its military capacity after decades of underinvestment.<\/p>\n
German government sources said Merz and Macron had \u2060discussed the decision to announce an end to the troubled project on Friday on the sidelines of the EU-Western Balkans summit in Montenegro.<\/p>\n
Both had previously tried \u200bin vain \u200bto persuade European aerospace group Airbus, \u200bwhich represents Germany and Spain, \u200cand France’s Dassault Aviation to reach an agreement.<\/p>\n
A European source briefed on the matter said the two sides were moving towards a face-saving solution in which the remaining systems outside the core fighter, such as the “combat cloud” of highly secure links, would maintain the same name: Future Combat Air System \u200cor FCAS.<\/p>\n
With French elections looming next year, \u200bthe formula is designed to address the \u200breluctance of Macron to sacrifice \u200bthe landmark FCAS project, which he launched with former German \u200cChancellor Angela Merkel in 2017, the \u200bsource said.<\/p>\n
The project, \u200bwhich centres on a core fighter jet supported by drones and linked by a classified “combat cloud”, had been in doubt for months as \u200bthe two sides have \u200cwrangled over specifications and control.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, additional reporting \u200bby Michel Rose and Tim Hepher, writing by Ludwig Burger, editing \u200bby Thomas Seythal and Andrew Heavens)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN, June 8 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron have concluded that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[125],"tags":[54701,242,21349,233,54700,240,54702],"class_list":["post-105321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-emmanuel-macron","tag-core-fighter","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-fighter-jet","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-future-combat-air-system","tag-german-chancellor","tag-troubled-project"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116715226873419889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}