BERLIN\/PARIS (Reuters) -France, Germany and Spain are set to resume high-level talks on the next phase of a \u200bmajor fighter project after delays caused by the recent political crisis in \u200cFrance, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
A ministerial meeting is planned for the week \u200cof November 24 as the three nations try to bridge differences over the next phase of the Future Combat Air System, which calls for a flying demonstrator model, two of the people said.<\/p>\n
A third source said a meeting was planned but that its \u2060date had not yet been \u200cannounced.<\/p>\n
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius is separately due to meet his French counterpart, Catherine Vautrin, in Paris next Monday, \u200dtwo of the sources said.<\/p>\n
No comment was immediately available from the three defence ministries involved in the 100-billion-euro project to develop a system of crewed stealth fighters and packs \u200bof armed drones.<\/p>\n
Pistorius told reporters last week that no new date for a trilateral \u200cministerial meeting had been set, but he reiterated Germany’s call for a decision on the next phase by end-year.<\/p>\n
Berlin has blamed French industry for blocking the programme’s next phase by demanding sole leadership of the project, in a coded reference to Dassault Aviation.<\/p>\n
Dassault, which handles France’s industrial participation in the \u2060project while Airbus represents Germany and Spain, has \u200bdenied reports that it wants to control 80%\u200b of the project.<\/p>\n
Pistorius said last week that he had discussed the topic with France’s Vautrin, who had stated her intention to \u200dcontinue with the project,\u2060 which is widely known as FCAS, or its French acronym, SCAF.<\/p>\n
Speaking ahead of a recent meeting with Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles, \u2060Vautrin said there was urgency to move ahead because France’s current Rafale warplanes would need to be \u200creplaced by 2040.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold, Tim Hepher, \u200cInti Landauro; Editing by Leslie Adler)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN\/PARIS (Reuters) -France, Germany and Spain are set to resume high-level talks on the next phase of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[7668,61997,27560,2000,299,36,148039,1824,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-566086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-boris-pistorius","9":"tag-catherine-vautrin","10":"tag-dassault-aviation","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-future-combat-air-system","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115538401885661429","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}