France's Macron: FCAS fighter jet program is not dead

French President Emmanuel Macron said the French-German-Spanish FCAS warplane programme was not dead and he hoped to discuss plans for progress on it soon with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

In December, sources told Reuters that a meeting between the French, German and Spanish defence ministers had failed to reach a breakthrough on rescuing the troubled programme, under which the countries would build a jet to replace France's Rafales and Germany and Spain's Eurofighters.

Asked in interviews with European newspapers including Le Monde and the Financial Times if the FCAS project was dead, Macron replied: "No".

"The French assessment is that FCAS is a very good project, and I have not heard a single German voice telling me that it is not a good project," Macron said in the interviews that were published on Tuesday.

He added that he hoped the FCAS project would advance.

($1 = 0.8403 euros)

-Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Andrew Heavens/Reuters