Finnish Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius during a North Atlantic Council meeting at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, June 16, 2023. VIRGINIA MAYO /AP
Eight months after its launch, the European missile defense shield project is still causing high tensions on the continent, especially between Paris and Berlin. A major conference on Europe’s air defenses, organized by France on Monday 19 June at Le Bourget (Seine-Saint-Denis) on the fringes of the International Aerospace Exhibition, must once again provide an opportunity to raise the issue. But there is nothing to suggest that this will settle the dispute, as German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had already announced that he would not be present.
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While the war in Ukraine highlighted the vulnerability of the countries on Europe’s eastern flank in the face of a possible conflict spillover, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz seized the initiative and in October, within the framework of NATO, proposed a project of
“Sky Shield” (Euro Sky Shield Initiative, ESSI). The principle: through the joint purchase of existing surface-to-air defense systems, economies of scale should be achieved in order to quickly achieve a complete protective bubble, especially missile defense systems.
In order to move forward quickly, Berlin offered the takeover a German short-range system (Iris-T), an American medium-range system (the Patriot PAC-3, which already accounts for the majority of systems deployed in Europe), and an Israeli long-range missile system (arrow 3). The project now brings together 17 European countries, including the United Kingdom, the Baltic States and most of Central Europe, with the exception of Poland.
Multiple divergences
Officially, the Germans are not closing the door on integrating a French system into the future device. “It’s always possible to join the project, but you have to act quickly,” explains a German source of the Mamba, a medium-range defense system developed jointly by France and Italy. In Paris, on the other hand, we now seem closed to any demonstration and have rather opted for a counter-offensive, in particular by organizing the Bourget conference in the presence of about twenty countries, which must close on Monday evening, with a speech by Emmanuel Macron at the Hôtel National des Invalides. “The Germans have proposed an industrial agreement, we are proposing a strategic initiative: to have the ability to build a European, sovereign defense with European equipment,” explains a French diplomatic source.
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