EU Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius slammed the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) defence project this week, noting that there are currently no success stories among pan-European defence projects.

The fighter jet project by Germany, France and Spain, once envisioned to be a great example of European cooperation, is currently on the brink of collapse due to an ongoing dispute between Paris and Berlin.

Speaking at an event organised by the Heinrich-Böll Foundation in Brussels on Monday evening, Kubilius argued that “we have no success story of developing pan-European or at least regional defence projects.”

“The last example of this failure is FCAS,” he added.

Launched in 2017, the FCAS project aimed to replace Germany and Spain’s Eurofighters and France’s Rafale jets by 2040. The project, however, has been stuck for over a year as German and French aviation giants continue to be at odds to each other. Both leading contractors, Germany’s Airbus Defence and Space and France’s Dassault, have publicly aired their disagreements about the envisioned work.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently argued that the disagreements are more than political, a statement that increased the uncertainty about the FCAS project’s future.

The €100 billion project – centred on a next-generation fighter jet operating in tandem with a network of drones and an AI cloud – has been stuck for over a year, and multiple solutions to the impasse have been floated recently.

One option would be to separate the fighter jet component of the overarching aerial combat system, allowing Germany and France to develop their own jets.

The three partner nations, France, Germany and Spain, aimed to find a solution by the end of last year – but ultimately postponed it indefinitely. Germany expected a proposal from France on how to continue by the end of February, but no communication has been made public so far.

Speaking from an EU perspective, Defence Commissioner Kubilius suggested that pan-European defence projects will be difficult to realise “if we are not institutionally united.”

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