The two mediators appointed in mid-March to unlock the Système aérien du futur (SCAF) — Laurent Collet-Billon, former head of France's Direction générale de l'armement (DGA, the defence procurement agency), and Frank Haun, former chief of German tank maker Krauss-Maffei Wegmann — have delivered their reports. The ball is now in the court of the French and German governments, as the CEOs of Airbus Defence & Space and Dassault Aviation have stopped speaking to each other for months. Their talks with the industrial players focused on three axes: intellectual property, work share, and export rights.
The deadlock is unchanged. Dassault demands clearer industrial leadership on the combat-aircraft pillar, currently split equally between Dassault, Airbus Germany and Airbus Spain — a redistribution Berlin rejects. Emmanuel Macron hoped to save the programme announced with Angela Merkel in 2017, on which €3bn of studies have already been committed out of a €100bn total project. According to Handelsblatt, the mediators found no deal and Friedrich Merz wants a final call by Tuesday, ahead of the informal meeting of the 27 EU heads of state in Cyprus on Thursday and Friday. The French DGA, however, says "mediation is still ongoing".
In Germany, the aerospace industry and the IG Metall union are pushing for two separate aircraft, keeping common pillars for drones and a "combat cloud". Conservative MP Volker Mayer-Lay is calling for an immediate switch to the two-aircraft solution. Dassault CEO Eric Trappier had himself flagged the date at the early-April "Guerres et paix" forum: "We will meet again on 18 April". Source: Les Echos, 18 April 2026, Emmanuel Grasland and Anne Drif.
The story in one line. Collet-Billon and Haun have wrapped up their “rapprochement mission” between Dassault and Airbus Defence & Space on SCAF; with no visible industrial accord, the political decision now sits with Paris and Berlin — with a German deadline floated for Tuesday.
Key numbers
- SCAF programme: €100bn over its life; €3bn already committed in studies.
- Announced in 2017 by Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel.
- Mediators appointed mid-March: Laurent Collet-Billon (ex-DGA) and Frank Haun (ex-Krauss-Maffei Wegmann).
- Combat-aircraft pillar: split equally between Dassault Aviation, Airbus Germany and Airbus Spain.
- Three discussion axes: intellectual property, work share, export rights.
- Political calendar: Friedrich Merz wants a decision by Tuesday, before the informal meeting of the 27 EU heads of state in Cyprus on Thursday and Friday.
Why it matters
SCAF is the centrepiece of European air sovereignty, and one of the few industrial programmes of that scale still under way on the continent. The disagreement is not technical but industrial: who leads, who builds, who exports. Dassault wants clearer steering; Berlin refuses to reopen the three-way split. The mediators’ three axes — intellectual property (who owns what at the end), work share (who does what), exports (who can sell outside the EU, and to whom) — map directly onto those sovereignty tensions.
The alternative gaining traction in Germany is the “two-aircraft solution”: a German aircraft and a French aircraft, with shared modules for drones and the “combat cloud” (the software layer linking aircraft, drones and sensors). That preserves jobs at Manching (Bavaria) and German industrial coherence, but it sacrifices the original 2017 bet: one European aircraft to compete with the US F-35.
Takeaway
If Merz confirms the two-aircraft solution before Cyprus, SCAF as designed in 2017 ends, and Europe loses a major industrial-cooperation opportunity. If Paris instead secures a rebalanced leadership for Dassault, the programme survives — but on shaky political foundations. Either way, the friction cost — years lost and billions already spent — is now explicit.
Source: Les Echos, 18 April 2026, Emmanuel Grasland and Anne Drif.