French Jets Drill Germany's Nuclear Role

Two French Rafales stood next to two German Eurofighters at Nörvenich air base, near Cologne, on 16 July. The difference mattered more than the photograph. The Rafales can carry nuclear weapons. The Eurofighters cannot. Together they practised aerial refuelling and coordination, the first joint drill after a March political understanding between Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz under which France offered partners a closer role in the aircraft, sensors, warnings and exercises that make its nuclear deterrent operational (t-online, Le Monde). Germany is expected to join a French nuclear exercise this autumn (Deutsche Welle, Upday).

For Malta, this is the kind of European defence shift that usually looks remote until the mechanism becomes clear. Germany is not becoming a nuclear power. It is being drawn closer to the conventional military system around France’s deterrent: early-warning data, air defence, refuelling and coordination. The authority to launch remains French.

France Controls the Weapon. The Constitution Says So.

Under the French constitution, the president alone commands the nuclear arsenal (Conseil constitutionnel). Macron said in a 2020 doctrine speech that France’s "vital interests" have a European dimension, but he did not create a shared launch authority (Élysée, 7 February 2020).

Germany has a separate legal ceiling. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty bars non-nuclear states from receiving nuclear weapons or control over them (UN NPT text). Berlin has said publicly that cooperation with France changes neither Germany’s non-nuclear status nor its role in NATO’s US-led nuclear sharing arrangements (Bundesregierung).

So the 2026 steps turn earlier French offers into machinery: a Franco-German nuclear steering group, joint exercises, and a coalition for integrated missile defence described by Paris as "purely defensive" (Élysée, 13 July 2026). Germany gets consultation and a place in the warning architecture. It does not get warheads or a launch code.

Eastern Allies Want Hardware, Not Doctrine

Poland welcomes European reinforcement but is not treating it as a substitute for the American umbrella. Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski compared the future US role to "cavalry behind the hill", still strategically necessary even if less visibly present (Bankier). Warsaw has opened its own steering group with Paris and is exploring French weapons depots on Polish soil, though no agreement exists yet (Rzeczpospolita).

Finland’s Defence Minister Antti Häkkänen called a French nuclear shield for Europe "a massive, decades-long project" (Yle). Helsinki appears to value France’s concrete troop contributions to NATO’s forward forces in Finland more than doctrinal promises from Paris.

Italy shows where coalition enthusiasm stops. Rome hosts US nuclear weapons under NATO sharing, where the US keeps custody while European allies participate politically, so the question of what decision rights France is actually offering is not theoretical (NATO). Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni skipped the Paris summit while Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani attended, joining the missile-defence coalition but keeping a distance from Macron’s presentation of French nuclear power as a European shield (Euronews Italy). Rome’s message was plain enough: cooperate on air defence, without signing up to French leadership of European deterrence.

A Showcase Built on Industrial Wreckage

The deterrence display also has a political function. In June, France and Germany abandoned their joint sixth-generation fighter project, FCAS, after years of deadlock between Airbus and Dassault (IRIS, Le Monde). Days before the Nörvenich drills, Merz chose to buy American Tomahawk missiles for long-range strike, irritating Paris further. Nuclear cooperation now fills some of the space left by industrial failure: proof that the Franco-German relationship still has strategic weight, even when the defence-industrial track has broken down.

The March understanding has not been published as a formal text. What the public can see are exercises, speeches and coalitions, not the consultation procedures or the limits of what was agreed. France can make its deterrent more European in practice, but not in command. Macron and Merz still need to explain what consultation means before allies are asked to treat it as reassurance.