Dassault was the most experienced of all partners (more than 90 prototype since 1945 before joining the programme, Rafale A being No 93) and wanted design lead. The reason was they had quiet a lot of tight specs from Marine Nationale and the Typhoon design was snot easyly navalysable if i can put it this way:
First low speed:
Rafale close coupled canards energises the boundary layer over the win in a way no other aircraft does.
http://img63.echo.cx/img63/3474/C01.jpg
http://img9.echo.cx/img9/8494/rafale0210243ve.jpg
Second. Air-intakes. On Typhoon they are "boxed" side by side under the fuselage, this implies that to adapt the airframe to the stress of repetead chocks from traps, the weight penalty was higher than with separated intakes which doesn't need to be beefed-up.
This is why there is no Naval Typhoon.
http://img214.echo.cx/img214/3153/mbringback4ri.jpg
But this one have a hell of bring back capability:
Two 1.250 L tank probabilly empty but also six (6) AASMs of more than 250 Kg each.
Also they weren't happy with the dual chin intake solution because of the risk of double flame out. Un case of one engine dying on you, the pressure bulid-up in its uintake glove bleeds over the intake lips and "polute" its airflow, i believe this is what caused the Spanish Typhoon double engine failure during an engine iddle flight test.
They went further:
Rafale is the most aerodynamically developed Canard delta i have seen so far. Even more so then the HIMAT drone, which datas were used to design Typhoon.
http://img74.echo.cx/img74/3441/Inta...rrangement.jpg
They used compression (A) and expension (B) airflow to increase the boundary layer airflows energy on both side of the wing.
http://img76.echo.cx/img76/4244/Compressiveflow.jpg
http://img83.echo.cx/img83/4456/Expansiveflow.jpg
As a result, they were able to fly it passed 100* AOA and 40 Kt negative spoeed without loss of control. Go beat this with Eurofigher and i still have to hear about the CCV F-22 doing any better.