France and the limits of partnership (E. Lambert)

Eric Lambert, chercheur associé et franco-britannique, nous propose cette petite pièce de doctrine qui pointe de vraies difficultés. LV

Abstract : France presents itself as Europe’s natural partner of choice in defence: militarily capable, politically ambitious, and industrially sophisticated. Yet across Europe, a different assessment increasingly prevails. While France is respected as an ally and valued as an operational actor, it is approached with caution as a long-term partner. This article argues that the issue is not competence or intent, but structure. French defence cooperation is designed to preserve autonomy, not to share it. Through four recent European case studies, the article demonstrates that reciprocity with France is consistently promised, frequently negotiated, but rarely delivered in practice.

Partnership as Rhetoric, Not Constraint

In Paris, partnership is spoken of as a natural extension of leadership. Elsewhere in Europe, it is understood as a mutual limitation on sovereignty. The gap between these two interpretations explains much of the persistent friction in French-led defence cooperation.

France is widely acknowledged as a serious military power. It deploys forces, sustains operations, accepts risk, and retains a culture of command that many European states no longer possess. Yet partnership is not judged by battlefield conduct alone. It is judged by whether political authority, industrial control, and long-term decision-making are genuinely shared.

From Berlin to Stockholm, Rome to Athens, Warsaw to London, the verdict is remarkably consistent: France is reliable in crisis, capable in execution, but reluctant to accept reciprocity when cooperation begins to constrain national preference. This is not an emotional judgement. It is an empirical one.

I. The French Method: Sovereignty First, Reciprocity Conditional

France does not enter partnerships in the way most of its European counterparts understand the term. It curates them.

Cooperation is welcomed, even encouraged, provided it does not dilute national freedom of manoeuvre. Governance structures are elaborate, rhetoric is inclusive, and institutional density is often impressive. What is far less evident is symmetry in authority.

Decision rights over system architecture, standards, interfaces, and escalation tend to remain firmly anchored in the French system. This is not accidental. France treats defence industry not merely as an economic sector, but as an extension of sovereignty. National champions are therefore not simply firms; they are instruments of state power.

Other capitals read this clearly. Berlin sees primacy disguised as procedure. Rome and Madrid see openness granted selectively. Northern Europe sees centralisation with diplomatic polish. Central and Eastern Europe sees reassurance paired with conditionality.

France does not behave irrationally. It behaves coherently according to its own hierarchy of interests. The difficulty is that this hierarchy is incompatible with genuine reciprocity.

II. Political Credibility: Respected in Urgency, Discounted in Duration

France’s political credibility is strongest precisely where partnership matters least: in moments of immediate crisis. When speed, resolve and willingness to act are required, France performs. This earns admiration, even from sceptics.

The problem emerges over time.

Defence partnerships unfold over decades. They require commitments that survive electoral cycles, budgetary rephasing, industrial lobbying and bureaucratic rivalry. French commitments are rarely abandoned outright, but they are frequently reinterpreted. Adjustments are presented as pragmatism, recalibration, or strategic realism. Partners experience them as unilateral correction.

This pattern is widely recognised. Berlin treats French declarations as aspirational until contractually locked. Stockholm distinguishes carefully between political language and industrial reality. Rome hedges. Warsaw welcomes the reassurance but limits exposure. London, having learned the lesson earlier, caps integration by design.

France speaks more elegantly than most. It also promises more. Its partners have learned to measure cooperation not by discourse, but by what is legally, industrially, and structurally irreversible.

III. Industrial Cooperation: Balanced Percentages, Asymmetric Power

French defence cooperation is rarely unfair on paper. Workshare can be distributed, supply chains diversified, and participation broadened. Yet the elements that confer long-term sovereignty—design authority, intellectual property, export control, and system evolution—remain tightly held whenever France has leverage.

This produces a familiar outcome. Partners participate, but do not co-own. They contribute, but do not steer. Over time, this creates dependency rather than interdependence.

For smaller states, this may be an acceptable price for access and speed. For industrial peers, it becomes a contest. Either way, reciprocity is not embedded. It must be extracted, often at the cost of delay, distrust and political intervention.

The following four cases illustrate this pattern with uncomfortable clarity.

IV. Four European Case Studies Where Reciprocity Fails in Practice

1. Franco-German Air Combat: FCAS and the Collision of Sovereignty Models

The Future Combat Air System was intended as the cornerstone of a new European defence architecture. With a projected lifetime cost exceeding one hundred billion euros, it was never merely an aircraft programme. It was a contest over industrial primacy, technological sovereignty, and the philosophical purpose of defence cooperation itself.

The core dispute has consistently centred on design authority, intellectual property, and control of future evolution. France insists that leadership must reflect operational accountability and doctrinal coherence. Germany insists that industrial parity must reflect financial participation and economic return. Spain, formally included, remains structurally peripheral.

However, the Franco-German tension cannot be reduced to a simple struggle for primacy. It is also a collision between fundamentally different strategic cultures.

France approaches FCAS as a military capability programme first and an industrial opportunity second. The system is conceived as an operational necessity designed to guarantee future combat autonomy, nuclear deterrence credibility, and expeditionary independence. Industrial returns, while essential, are treated as derivative of military effectiveness.

Germany, by contrast, approaches FCAS through a markedly different hierarchy of priorities. The German defence-industrial tradition places considerable emphasis on technology acquisition, industrial scaling, and export positioning as primary policy objectives. Within this framework, defence cooperation is often viewed less as a tool for force generation and more as an accelerator of industrial competitiveness and commercial expansion.

From the French perspective, this creates a persistent and deeply uncomfortable ambiguity. Paris perceives Berlin as pursuing access to core technologies, design methodologies, and export leverage under the umbrella of cooperation, while assigning secondary importance to operational coherence and military doctrine. German demands for symmetrical intellectual property access and distributed industrial leadership are therefore interpreted in Paris not merely as requests for parity, but as attempts to extract technological sovereignty without assuming equivalent operational responsibility.

From the German perspective, the French position appears equally problematic. Berlin views French insistence on architectural leadership as an effort to monopolise downstream export advantage and long-term industrial rent under the guise of operational necessity.

The result has been repeated delays, political rescues, and an erosion of trust. Governance has expanded as delivery has slipped. The programme survives, but largely as a managed stalemate.

Reciprocity exists institutionally. It does not exist functionally. FCAS has become less a shared project than a sustained negotiation over which national model of defence cooperation will ultimately prevail.

2. Franco-German Land Systems: MGCS and the Illusion of a Common MBT

MGCS was announced with solemn declarations of equality. In practice, it has been a prolonged negotiation over who controls the industrial core of Europe’s future land combat ecosystem.

The programme has suffered from competing industrial centres of gravity, unresolved questions of leadership, and repeated resets. Political intervention has been required not to accelerate ambition, but merely to prevent collapse.

Here again, the issue is not technical feasibility. It is governance. France seeks to preserve decisive influence. Germany seeks to avoid subordination. The compromise structures that emerge satisfy neither fully and delay everyone.

This is cooperation without convergence.

3. France and Italy: Shipbuilding, Nationalisation and the Limits of European Champions

The collapse of the Franco-Italian shipbuilding consolidation attempt was revealing precisely because it stripped away rhetoric.

France spoke of European champions. Italy moved to acquire control. France nationalised the asset. Negotiations followed. Conditions multiplied. Antitrust concerns emerged. The project died.

What remained was clarity. When sovereignty and control are at stake, France does not compromise. It manages.

Subsequent Franco-Italian cooperation has retreated into safer terrain: joint studies, subsidised research, and pre-competitive frameworks. These are useful, but they are not industrial integration. They are cooperation without transfer of power.

4. France and Greece: Security Guarantees, Procurement Gravity, Limited Reciprocity

The Franco-Greek relationship is often cited as a success. Politically and militarily, it is robust. Commercially, it is substantial. Greek procurement from France runs into many billions, with long-tail dependence through sustainment and upgrades.

What is notably absent is symmetrical industrial participation. Greek industry gains involvement, but not authority. Technology transfer is limited. Export leverage is non-existent. Sovereign evolution remains external.

Athens accepts this because speed, reliability and reassurance matter more than industrial autonomy…… for the moment. Others observe the relationship and draw a quieter conclusion: partnership with France can be effective, but it is rarely reciprocal.

A Coherent Power, an Incomplete Partner

France is not failing at partnership by accident. It is failing by design.

It values autonomy over symmetry, control over constraint, leadership over co-ownership. This produces a system that is coherent, effective in crisis, and deeply frustrating over time.

Europe does not doubt France’s seriousness. It doubts its willingness to endure reciprocity as a cost rather than proclaim it as a virtue.

Until that distinction is resolved, France will remain a respected ally and a carefully managed partner, admired in war, negotiated in peace, and rarely trusted with shared sovereignty.

E. Lambert