End of the FCAS fighter jet project: Germany and France fail to deliver a joint super jet

According to the information available, the reasons for the failure lie deep in the industrial policy of both countries. French industry effectively claimed sole leadership and around 80 percent of the work share. France and Germany did not even want the same aircraft: Paris wanted a system for nuclear deterrence, Berlin did not need it in that form. Dassault and Airbus, too, had repeatedly clashed since 2017.

Industrial policy at the heart of the conflict

From Paris the line now is that Germany and Airbus (in which France is also a shareholder) had blocked the project with exaggerated equality demands and political hesitation, which observers consider strange. FCAS was the great symbolic promise of European "strategic autonomy". No European head of state has used the term strategic autonomy as often, as pathetically and as programmatically as the French president. Macron wanted to teach Europe to grow up on security policy, to think more independently of the United States and to gain its own freedom of action in key technologies.

Germany is now looking for alternatives. Defence Minister Pistorius expressed openness to an initiative titled "Team Gen 6", which is to be officially presented this week and has submitted a position paper to the Federal Ministry of Defence. Pistorius stated, however, that there were further options beyond the alliance's initiative. One of them is the order of additional American F-35 fighter jets. Germany is buying American F-35s to close gaps.

What comes next for Germany?

France, for its part, can fall back on the company Dassault and its Rafale jets and pursue its own line. Europe thus stands to lose precisely what FCAS promised: a common industrial-policy answer to the geopolitical challenges. Europe lives in a time of growing Russian threat, uncertain American guarantees and enormous pressure to rearm.

Several European heads of state and government criticised the failure of the FCAS project as worrying. They see in it a signal of the difficulty of European defence cooperations, particularly as rearmament requirements are urgently increasing in view of the security situation. The time pressure on European capitals is mounting.

The report was broadcast on 10 June 2026 on Deutschlandfunk and was written by Armin Arbeiter, editor at NZZ Deutschland. It is an excerpt from the newsletter "Der andere Blick am Abend". The coming weeks are likely to show which industrial partners and governments will join the "Team Gen 6" initiative.