Merz, Macron to Discuss Fighter Jet Leadership
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron are set to meet in Berlin to address escalating tensions over the Future Combat Air System jet program. The dispute centers on a leadership tussle between the two main defense contractors, France's Dassault Aviation and Airbus. Let's talk to Bloomberg's Benedict Kammel, who leads our global aviation coverage. What then, Benny, is this dispute all about? Well, it's really between Airbus on the one side, which sort of broadly represent the German side. And on the other side, you have Dassault representing the French side. And the question really is who is going to lead this program? They did have an agreement saying we want it to be broadly equal as a third company in this Indra, of Spain. So the idea was let's have sort of equal share of this program, the future aircraft combat system. So but then Dassault came out and said we would like to have a leadership role in this. The reason being we make the Rafale fighter jet. We know a thing or two about building these. We should really be in control. We can't be some sort of a happy socialist union here. We need to have one party in control, and that's us. That obviously didn't sit well with Airbus. All of this broke into the open last month at the Paris Air Show. So you had Airbus on the one side saying, why are we relitigating this whole issue? We thought we'd had an agreement. This is really tiring. Then on the other side, you had Dassault coming out and saying, well, this is the way it should be. Take it our way, or we might even walk away from the whole program. So this is where we're at right now. So you're bringing the adults in, as it were, you bringing in the political leadership and saying, guys, you need to sort this out, you need to sort this out. It's Europe at stake. It's one of the key programs at stake. And hopefully today and in the next couple of weeks, they will find some kind of an agreement.
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