Berlin joins French nuclear planning

France and Germany held the first working session of their bilateral Nuclear Steering Group in Paris on 27 May (n-tv, Deutschlandfunk). The meeting pushes forward a nuclear deterrence framework now stretching across nine European states. None of their parliaments has voted on the specific arrangements.

The framework began on 2 March, when President Emmanuel Macron announced dissuasion avancée, or forward deterrence, from France's Île-Longue submarine base. France would increase its nuclear warhead stockpile for the first time since 1992 and stop publishing the size of its arsenal. Chancellor Friedrich Merz signed a declaration creating the steering group. In the weeks that followed, Poland, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, and the UK entered the framework through separate bilateral channels.

What Germany Actually Gets

Paris describes Berlin's new role as co-gestionnaire doctrinal, or doctrinal co-manager. In practice, that means strategic dialogue on how French nuclear weapons, conventional forces, and missile-defence systems fit together. Germany will not help plan strikes, choose targets, or shape the decision to launch. That power remains with the French president alone.

Germany's first concrete step is observer status at France's "Poker" nuclear exercise in September 2026. German aircraft could later provide fighter escort or aerial refuelling for nuclear-armed French Rafales (n-tv). Those are conventional support tasks, not nuclear delivery roles.

Berlin already has a deeper nuclear role inside NATO. At Büchel Air Base, German pilots train to deliver American B61 nuclear bombs, and Germany sits in the Nuclear Planning Group, NATO's main body for nuclear policy. IPG-Journal judged the French arrangement "less substantial", with no "credible deterrence gain" unless Germany gets real input into planning (IPG-Journal).

The point is insurance. Doubts about US reliability are no longer occasional background noise, and both Paris and Berlin need a visible bilateral result. The steering group gives them one. Its value is political hedging, not added military capability.

Nine Democracies, No Legislative Process

The steering group was created by joint declaration under Article 4 of the Aachen Treaty, the 2019 Franco-German cooperation pact. That route required no new parliamentary ratification. Merz's security adviser Günter Sautter led the Paris session, with another meeting planned before Germany's summer recess (Stern, Deutschlandfunk).

The same executive-only method runs through the wider framework. Poland joined French nuclear exercises after the April Gdańsk summit. Norway signed the Narvik Arrangement on 27 May. Finland submitted legislation to lift its ban on hosting nuclear weapons and is the only one of the nine where opposition parties have demanded a legislative process. Elsewhere, parliaments have been informed at most, never consulted.

That matters for Malta because it is not sitting outside this debate as a spectator. Three EU member states, Austria, Ireland, and Malta, are legally bound by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to oppose any form of nuclear assistance. Yet the bilateral frameworks now being built around them offer no institutional channel through which they can object.

Untested Legal Lines

Several legal questions have not been tested. It is still unclear whether a German tanker refuelling a nuclear-armed Rafale would count as "assistance" under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1968 agreement barring non-nuclear states from acquiring or controlling nuclear weapons. Germany's Two-Plus-Four Treaty, the 1990 agreement that enabled reunification, prohibits German "control over" nuclear weapons. The French model is designed to stay below that line, but the line itself has never been legally defined in an operational setting.

By September's Poker exercise, the framework will have moved through two rounds of bilateral talks, one observation mission, and no parliamentary votes. The military substance is limited; Germany gets less from France than it already has from NATO. The larger shift is democratic: nine European countries are normalising executive-only authority over nuclear participation, treating the most dangerous weapons on earth as too sensitive for legislative debate. At what point does conventional participation in nuclear operations stop being conventional?