French-German jet fiasco puts Berlin in pilot seat

Dassault Aviation SA

09/06/2026 12:01

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
By Pierre Briancon
BERLIN, June 9 (Reuters Breakingviews) - France and Germany have at last agreed on the mercy killing of their eight-year old plan to build a sixth-generation fighter jet. Berlin took the decisive step of withdrawing from the €100 billion project, which also involved Spain. But the plan had looked all but dead for months amidst mounting anger and recrimination between two companies, Dassault Aviation AM.PA and Airbus AIR.PA, that were earmarked to build the “plane of the future”. Dassault, the French maker of the Rafale fighter, drove the project into the ground with persistent demands that it be anointed the sole industrial leader of this “Future Combat Air System.”
The key to the dispute was the French group’s refusal to allow technology transfers to the German-based military division of Airbus. The irony is that Airbus, whose current CEO is French, was built as a Franco-German group in which both governments still each own a 11% stake, and which itself owns 11% of Dassault. French president Emmanuel Macron, who has launched the FCAS project together with then-chancellor Angela Merkel in 2018, was in the end powerless to pressure Dassault to cooperate.
While expected, the failure of FCAS is a major setback for a unified European defence. But it also shows that in the current European context, Germany is in the pilot seat when it comes to building a credible military. Since it has the money, it is the one calling the shots. Berlin’s defence budget will rise 28% next year to €106 billion. With support for Ukraine and other defence-related spending, total military spending, at €145 billion, would amount to more than 3% of the country’s GDP in 2027.
Germany may not yet have all the know-how needed to build a fighter jet on its own, but it at least has the means to try. And Berlin could announce as soon as this week an alternative choice of partnership. It could strike a deal with Sweden’s Saab, whose Gripen fighter jet has been a global success. It could also try to join an FCAS competitor project, the Global Air Combat Program of the UK, Italy and Japan - although as a latecomer it may have limited industrial influence.
As for France, it will struggle to muster the resources to build a next-generation fighter by itself. Macron will be gone next year, leaving behind a fiscal deficit topping 5% of GDP and a country teetering on the edge of a political crisis if a far-right candidate is elected in his place. Dassault CEO Eric Trappier has bragged it could build the future plane on its own. But in the absence of strong French orders, he'll need foreign buyers. With France's military spending at just a little over 2% of GDP next year, both company and country risk taking a back seat in Europe’s military buildup.
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CONTEXT NEWS
The leaders of Germany and Francehave agreed to scrap a landmark project to ​develop and build a new-generation fighter jet, officials said on June 8, bowing to industrial rivalries over Europe's most ambitious defence programme.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ‌and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the troubled project on the sidelines of the EU-Western Balkans summit in Montenegro last week and concluded that there was no prospect of breaking months of deadlock between arms firms involved in the plan, German officials said.
Macron's office said the two ​had discussed the project at length and regretted that the main industry partners - European aerospace group Airbus which represents Germany and Spain, and ​France's Dassault Aviation - had not been able to reach an agreement.

Germany's military budget has risen nearly threefold over ten years https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BRV-BRV/lgvdgredqpo/chart.png
(Editing by George Hay; Production by Shrabani Chakraborty)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on BRIANCON/pierre.briancon@thomsonreuters.com))