I'm struggling here but IIRC, the reason the French left the project was that they wanted a 9 ton aircraft and Eurofighter was well in excess of a 10 ton "girth".
If you go light it means, in theory, packaging and functionality are compromised. Trying to shoehorn everything into EF was tough but, at 9T, it must have been a nightmare. Mind you, as a single Nation project the French chose the funtions they wanted and not what the other partners might want.
That said, I have no knowledge of how Rafale turned out. Typhoon wasn't a bad compromise in the end.