https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/g...ance-2n7ffv5g5
Germany may abandon €100bn fighter jet project with France
Germany is considering abandoning its flagship €100 billion future combat jet project with France and joining a rival programme with Britain instead, The Times has been told.
As an overture to a potential deal, the German chancellor is also understood to be in talks over lifting Berlin’s veto on a delivery of Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia, which the UK views as an important strategic priority.
A pact along these lines would be a significant coup for London and reflect a steadily worsening rift between France and Germany, which are at odds over issues from energy and air defence to diplomatic protocol…..
One senior German official said Scholz saw no point in FCAS competing with Tempest and wanted either to merge the two or, failing that, to jettison FCAS and join Tempest. The chancellor is also said to be exasperated by the preferential treatment France has given its own aerospace companies in the initial stages of the FCAS project.
The ill feeling is exacerbated by a wider souring of relations between France and Germany on a number of different policy fronts.
Paris has, for example, snubbed Scholz’s “Sky Shield” initiative to bundle together European countries’ air and missile defence procurement, because it regards Germany’s preference for “off the shelf” systems from countries such as the US and Israel as an affront to its own research and development in this domain.
“When France says European defence policy, it means French industrial interests,” a senior source in Germany’s ruling coalition said. “Scholz feels he has far more in common with the British than with the French on these issues.”….
The next-generation combat aircraft decision is closely linked to a British-German wrangle over a
delivery of 48 Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia, in a package potentially worth more than £5 billion.
The jet aircraft are jointly manufactured by Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy, which means Berlin has the ability to block their export. It has done so up to now on the grounds that a Saudi-led coalition has been blamed for killing thousands of civilians in the Yemeni civil war….
Sources across Scholz’s three-party coalition say they are now increasingly confident that the Eurofighter sale will be unblocked in the near future. This is partly because the chancellor worries that prospective partners will shy away from entering multinational defence projects with Germany in future if it is seen to be single-handedly thwarting exports.