Karine de Vergeron: Franco-German cooperation and European security

Karine de Vergeron
Dr., Associate Director and Head of Europe Program
Global Policy Institute
London, UK / Vienna, Austria

Germany and France agreed to deepen their common program in defence matters and pursue a common vision in terms of arm exports with the 2019 Treaty of Aachen. This deepening was seen as a prerequisite to further consolidate greater European armed forces and interventions as well as strengthen European defence industry in the mid-to-long term. The move was also deemed necessary after Brexit since France had been taking on the main role for European defence and security. Moreover, the onset of the war in the Ukraine brought to the fore the urgent need for Germany to upgrade its own armed forces and defence capabilities. In a major policy shift, the German Parliament thus agreed in June 2022 to a 100 billion euros special fund to bring the Bundeswehr's weapons and equipment back up to standard. The fund should in part be used to top the regular defence budget of around 50 billion euros over several years to help re-build Germany's military, which had been left with low investments for years since the end of the Cold War. This should also allow Germany to meet the NATO target of spending 2% of the country’s GDP on defence annually and thus become the third-largest military spender worldwide after the United States and China. This ground-breaking decision was in this context much welcomed by its European partners, especially France, which saw it as a complement to the new joint exceptional program FCAS (future air warfare) agreed upon the two countries in 2017 and its equivalent MGCS (future ground warfare system).  

Despite the expectations raised by this major increase in Germany’s defence budget, some questions have arisen in the Franco-German bilateral relationship over the past months, with Germany mostly catering to its core industrial defence interests including the recent agreement to jointly acquire an air and missile defence shield with fourteen NATO countries, the so-called “European Sky Shield Initiative” based on American, German, and possibly Israeli technologies. This decision greatly annoyed France, which voluntarily remained outside of the project with a view to rather support future European autonomy and sovereignty in defence. In March 2022, Germany had also decided to purchase thirty-five American F-35 Lockheed Martin fighter aircrafts to replace its fleet of Tornado aircrafts dating back to the 1980s; and 15 Eurofighter Typhoons to bolster its air forces. The F-35s should also be used to carry tactical nuclear weapons for NATO.[1] 

This purchase does not, however, affect Germany’s plans to pursue the Future Combat Air System fighter (FCAS), which is considered as a key instrument for an integrated European Defence Policy. And although this undertaking remains at a very early stage, the agreement signed between Dassault and Airbus last December 2022 represents an important milestone for this Franco-German project to finally gain more momentum. The landmark contract agreed upon covering study work on the aircraft demonstrator and its components for a three-and-a-half-year timeframe constitutes a major step forward although it does not yet represent a fully-fledged industrial program. This is even more significant since the FCAS could also deal with the airborne component of the French nuclear deterrent.

Beyond this level of cooperation, Germany and France can continue to deepen their respective engagement to European security with a more solid and effective framework for defence industry, including further efforts to increase complementarity in systems and technology developments. Of particular significance would be the recognition of the importance of the role of nuclear deterrence for future European security, since all conventional efforts, including missile defence as currently foreseen by Germany, will not be able to provide a full guarantee of effectiveness with revisionist countries such as Putin’s Russia or against threats from nuclear actors.[2] As a simple fact, only nuclear weapons eventually matter to protect against war or conflict with another state owning this capability. Since France is the only European country with an independent nuclear deterrent, it would be crucial that in-depth consultations on this issue be pursued bilaterally with Germany beyond the FCAS program, and more generally at the European level to strengthen European security.[3] 

More generally, Germany’s rearmament program, if it goes ahead as expected, represents a fundamental change for German and European expenditure. France has an interest that this should take place in a European context, if anything equal to the interest she focused on the monetary implications of German reunification, which led to the creation of the Euro.