The simmering spat between France and Germany bubbled over publicly when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Machtwechsel podcast that the collaboration to build a nuclear-capable fighter jet with France is “not what we currently need in the German military.”
The project, known as the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), was launched in 2017 with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel and still-in-post French President Emmanuel Macron, but now looks in jeopardy.
Europe is scrambling to become a resurgent military force in its own right due to significantly diminished trust in the Trump administration’s commitment to European defense. Germany pulling back from the FCAS project could be seen as a serious setback to progress.
“The Germans should not make the same mistake as the French did and isolate themselves from the rest of Europe,” said Christian Mölling, director of the Berlin-based think tank, European Defence In a New Age (EDINA).
“The defense ramp up we are doing in Europe is primarily a national ramp up, but losing other Europeans politically is not the best way for the joint defense of Europe,” said Mölling.
Reducing dependence on the US
Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, his administration’s wavering support for the NATO military alliance and Ukraine, and his trade tariffs, have caused a shift in atmosphere in Brussels and around EU capitals towards reducing dependence on the US, especially regarding military systems.
“That’s why some of Merz’s public comments are not so smart,” said Guntram Wolff, senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank.
“What you don’t want to do is give the impression that you will continue buying American equipment at all costs,” said Wolff. “We need to shift away from US equipment, towards European equipment — I think most people have understood that by now.”
The US had been concerned that the FCAS programme could result in EU countries halting purchases of American-made F35-fighter jet, but that fear hasn’t materialized.
For Christian Mölling, the White House will take a clear lesson from the spat which has erupted between France and Germany on FCAS — “that you can split the Europeans,” he told DW.
Both industry and governments clashing
The big sticking point between Paris and Berlin has been the involvement of French arms giant Dassault Aviation, which has demanded significantly more control over the project than the other industry partner, European consortium company, Airbus Space and Defence.
“In recent years, Macron has failed to convince Dassault Aviation not to be a hindrance — once again — to the success of a major European cooperative armament programme,” Samuel Faure, an expert on European defense policy at Sciences Po, told DW.
“The pressure is much greater on the French head of state than on the German chancellor,” said Faure. “France’s budgetary situation is much more worrying than Germany’s, and Germany now has a much larger military budget than France.”
For Faure, different operational requirements, like France needing the jets to be capable of carrying its nuclear weapons, are not a reason to stop the project.
“This is never an insurmountable problem unless political leaders decide that it is,” he said.
That was a position broadly echoed by the CEO of Airbus in a recent exclusive interview with DW.
“It’s a danger that if you start on these big European projects, it takes more than political will,” said Michael Schoellhorn, CEO of Airbus Defence and Space. “It takes the industrial alignment of the players involved.”
EU defense projects unlikely to be harmed
Rearming Europe has not only been a priority for the two biggest economies of the continent but has also for all 27 members of the European Union, many of whom have legitimate concerns about their own safety following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The RearmEU proposal, rebranded as Readiness 2030,” is the EU’s flagship, €800 billion‑scale plan to boost defence spending, pool procurement, improve rapid deployment capabilities, solidify an industrial base for European defense companies, and to support Ukraine.
“But FCAS is deliberately not a European project,” said Christian Mölling from EDINA. “If there is a spillover in terms of atmosphere, then possibly, yes, this situation could have an effect on the EU.”
“I wouldn’t be too afraid,” said Mölling. “Nobody was waiting for FCAS to be the solution, the savior, or the avant garde of European defense industrial projects.”
System clouds over system hardware
Despite the growing rancor between France and Germany, the general consensus from experts and observers is that while the hardware side of the deal could fall apart, the cloud system it’s creating will likely remain on course.
“More important to the Germans than the fighter jet itself is the ‘combat cloud’, because, not only the French or the Germans, but the Europeans, have to lose something,” said Mölling. “There we are also dependent on the US.”
The FCAS agreement sets out work on an interlinked drone swarm and a cloud system which links the drones to jets in real-time.
“We need to invest so much more in intelligence — the software bit that connects it all,” said Guntram Wolff. “And if that is staying as a really strong Franco-German project, then I think we are actually in very good territory in terms of European cooperation.”
Edited by: Andreas Illmer