Germany, France and Spain are preparing for a fresh round of talks this week in Berlin as they attempt to resolve a long-running impasse over the Future Combat Air System, a next-generation fighter program valued at up to 100 billion euros. The meeting comes after several months of friction among industrial partners and warnings from officials that failure to advance the effort could undermine Europe’s broader defense posture. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron are also expected to revisit the issue next week, according to Reuters.
A lot of the dispute has to do with disagreements between Dassault Aviation and Airbus over workshare and access to key technologies. In recent weeks, tensions escalated after Germany’s IG Metall union said it would stop cooperating on the program if Dassault remained involved, citing concerns over leadership claims. French industry groups defended Dassault’s role, saying France’s industrial interests could not be sidelined.
The clash follows a period of sharpened rhetoric described by analysts as a result of weakened political alignment between Paris and Berlin, with both companies insisting on their respective responsibilities in the program’s next phase.
Some officials have suggested that narrowing the program’s scope to emphasize shared digital infrastructure—referred to as the “Combat Cloud”—and unmanned systems could offer a path forward. Under this approach, each nation could continue developing its own fighter while cooperating on core networked technologies.
With a mid-December target for a written industrial accord and European Union leaders set to meet in Brussels later this month, the countries are racing to determine whether the joint fighter effort can move ahead or needs to shift toward a more limited arrangement.
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