Airbus said that refusing to sell the Eurofighter to Riyadh “harms Germany’s reputation.”

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury believes that Berlin’s freeze on the sale of Eurofighter fighter jets to Saudi Arabia “harms Germany’s reputation.”

Airbus President Guillaume Faury said on Wednesday that Berlin’s freeze on the sale of Eurofigur fighter jets to Saudi Arabia “harms Germany’s reputation,” considering that this distorted its “credibility” toward its partners.

Germany has frozen arms sales to Riyadh since the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the end of 2018, which US intelligence in particular attributed to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which led to the obstruction of a new order to purchase 48 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, which was signed in London during Visit. By the Saudi prince.

In recent weeks, Riyadh asked its main competitor, the French airline Dassault, to submit an offer to buy 54 Rafale fighter jets. Eurofighter is a program led by the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain and brings together Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo.

A question of trust and credibility

For Guillaume Faury, who spoke during a conference call on the occasion of the publication of Airbus’ results, Berlin’s position “harms Germany’s reputation as an exporting country.”

“This creates a very difficult situation with Eurofighter partner countries that clearly intend to be able to export it,” said the Airbus boss, who is preparing to hand over the reins of operations in the commercial aircraft branch. A strategic, global and transformative agenda.”

He added: “This clearly raises the issue of trust and credibility of Germany as a country participating in international programmes.”

He added that if he said he saw “a positive trend towards calming the situation,” then this “is not progressing at the pace we need, at least the one we consider necessary at Airbus,” calling for “clear and concrete decisions on” this issue in order to allow the export of Eurofighter aircraft to the Kingdom. Saudi Arab.