BERLIN/PARIS: France, Germany and Spain are set to resume high-level talks on the next phase of a major fighter project after delays caused by the recent political crisis in France, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
A ministerial meeting is planned for the week of November 24 as the three nations try to bridge differences over the next phase of the Future Combat Air System, which calls for a flying demonstrator model, two of the people said.
A third source said a meeting was planned but that its date had not yet been announced.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is separately due to meet his French counterpart, Catherine Vautrin, in Paris next Monday, two of the sources said.
No comment was immediately available from the three defense ministries involved in the 100-billion-euro project to develop a system of crewed stealth fighters and packs of armed drones.
Pistorius told reporters last week that no new date for a trilateral ministerial meeting had been set, but he reiterated Germany’s call for a decision on the next phase by end-year.
Berlin has blamed French industry for blocking the program’s next phase by demanding sole leadership of the project, in a coded reference to Dassault Aviation.
Dassault, which handles France’s industrial participation in the project while Airbus represents Germany and Spain, has denied reports that it wants to control 80 percent of the project.
Pistorius said last week that he had discussed the topic with France’s Vautrin, who had stated her intention to continue with the project, which is widely known as FCAS, or its French acronym, SCAF.
Speaking ahead of a recent meeting with Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles, Vautrin said there was urgency to move ahead because France’s current Rafale warplanes would need to be replaced by 2040.
France, Germany, Spain to resume delayed fighter talks, sources say
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France, Germany, Spain to resume delayed fighter talks, sources say
- A ministerial meeting is planned for the week of November 24
Aid workers stand trial in Greece on migrant smuggling charges
- All 24 defendants are affiliated with rescue group ERCI, which operated on Greece's Lesbos island from 2016 to 2018
- EU countries are tightening rules on migration as right-wing parties gain ground across the bloc amid a migration crisis
ATHENS: Two dozen aid workers went on trial in Greece on Thursday on charges including migrant smuggling, in a case that rights groups have dismissed as a baseless attempt to outlaw aid for refugees heading to Europe.
The trial on the island of Lesbos comes as EU countries, including Greece — which saw more than one million people reaching its shores during Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015-2016 — are tightening rules on migration as right-wing parties gain ground across the bloc.
The 24 defendants, affiliated with the Emergency Response Center International (ERCI), a nonprofit search-and-rescue group that operated on Lesbos from 2016 to 2018, face multi-year prison sentences. The felony charges include involvement in a criminal group facilitating the illegal entry of migrants and money laundering linked to the group’s funding.
Among them is Sarah Mardini, one of two Syrian sisters who saved refugees in 2015 by pulling their sinking dinghy to shore and whose story inspired the popular 2022 Netflix movie The Swimmers, and Sean Binder, a German national who began volunteering for ERCI in 2017. They were arrested in 2018 and spent over 100 days in pre-trial detention before being released pending trial. “The trial’s result will define if humanitarian aid will be judicially protected from absurd charges or whether it will be left to the maelstrom of arbitrary narratives by prosecuting authorities,” defense lawyer Zacharias Kesses told Reuters. Greece has toughened its stance on migrants. Since 2019, the center-right government has reinforced border controls with fences and sea patrols and in July it temporarily suspended processing asylum applications for migrants arriving from North Africa.
Anyone caught helping migrants to shore today may face charges including facilitating illegal entry into Greece or helping a criminal enterprise under a 2021 law passed as part of Europe’s efforts to counter mass migration from the Middle East and Asia. In 2023, a Greek court dropped espionage charges against the defendants.
Rights groups have criticized the case as baseless and lacking in evidence. “The case depends on deeply-flawed logic,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “Saving lives at sea is mischaracterized as migrant smuggling, so the search-and-rescue group is a criminal organization, and therefore, the group’s legitimate fundraising is money laundering.”
