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The "Franco-German engine", which has driven the European Union for years, has now stopped. No, it's not broken. But Germany, it seems, does not want to keep the steering wheel, together with France.
The relationship between France and Germany is so important to both that each side has its own version to describe it. For romantics in France, in the country of Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, the alliance is often described as a couple, who occasionally quarrel with each other and fight with others.
The divisions between the two powerful countries are becoming more visible day by day, and there are a number of issues on which there is disagreement.
German "betrayal".
Most recently, Germany is considering abandoning its €100 billion fighter jet project with France and instead joining a competing program with Britain. And as a kind of prelude to a possible agreement, as the British media "The Times" writes, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also in negotiations to remove Berlin's veto on the delivery of Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Saudi Arabia, which the United Kingdom considers an important strategic priority.
The pact would be a significant victory for London in that sense and would reflect a growing rift between France and Germany, which are at odds over several issues ranging from energy and air defense to diplomatic protocol. The issue of developing a new warfighter puts the German chancellor in front of a series of difficult decisions that will determine his country's positioning in Europe and beyond.
The first is whether Germany should stick to the concept of the Air Combat Air System (FCAS), a major Franco-German-Spanish program to develop and build the next generation of air forces, which some analysts call the most important defense in Europe.
Scholz's plans
The central idea is to digitally connect the new stealth fighter to drones, automated mini-fighter groups, older fighter jets and even sea or land assets through a high-tech platform. Berlin alone has already allocated 40 billion euros of investment in FCAS, which should be 'there' by 2040. But the program has encountered several delays and disputes over design and funding.
Sources close to Scholz say he is worried that the project is in danger of turning into a big "nothing" and falling behind competing programs. The US Air Force and Navy expect to field their new sixth-generation fighter jet variants by 2030, and in Britain BAE Systems and Rolls Royce are leading a program to develop a stealth fighter known as the Tempest. , which should be ready by 2035 and will form the backbone of the wider British-Italian-Japanese air alliance.
A senior German official said Scholz saw no point in competing FCAS with Tempest and wanted either to merge the two or, failing that, abandon FCAS and join the Tempest program. The chancellor is also said to be outraged by the preferential treatment France gave its airlines in the initial stages of the FCAS project.
French interests
The ill feeling is compounded by the wider deterioration of relations between France and Germany on a number of different political fronts. Paris, for example, rejected Scholz's "Sky Shield" initiative to combine the procurement of European countries' air and missile defense because it considers Berlin's preference for "off-the-shelf" systems from countries such as the US and Israel an insult to own research and development in this field. "When France says European defense policy, it means French industrial interests," said a senior source in Germany's ruling coalition. "Scholz thinks he has much more in common with the British than with the French on these issues"./ Taken from "The Times".
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