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Germany has dropped its opposition to supplying Saudi Arabia with Eurofighter jets, though it has warned it would take several years for the aircraft to be built and delivered.
Annalena Baerbock, the Green foreign minister, said Saudi Arabia’s role in foiling attacks on Israel meant Berlin could no longer justify blocking the UK’s aspirations to supply the military aircraft.
Her position was backed by Robert Habeck, economy minister and deputy chancellor, and a fellow Green. He acknowledged that the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia “still doesn’t meet our standards” and was “still ambivalent”. But “Saudi Arabian defensive missiles are also protecting Israel”.
Berlin has vetoed the export of the Eurofighter Typhoon jets since 2018 in protest at Saudi Arabia’s role in the war in Yemen and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
But Baerbock said during a trip to Israel that the fact Saudi Arabia was shooting down missiles fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen that were aimed at Israel meant the kingdom was bolstering Israel’s security and helping to prevent the war in Gaza from turning into a regional conflagration.
“For that reason we don’t see why we as the German government should oppose the British thinking on more Eurofighters for Saudi Arabia,” she said after talks with Israeli president Yitzhak Herzog and the new Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz.
But Scholz’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit warned that it might take some time for the planes to be delivered. Saudi Arabia, he said, would have to first invite bids, with a tender lasting months or even years.
“Then the contract is awarded, and the planes must be produced. And only then, after several years, will the planes be supplied,” he said. He added that any delivery would require the approval of Germany’s federal security council.
Arms exports to Saudi Arabia are highly controversial in Germany, in view of the kingdom’s human rights records and its regional power aspirations.
That was the reason why the Greens were able to persuade their coalition partners, the Social Democrats and liberals, to agree to ban all deliveries of Eurofighters to Riyadh until the end of the current parliamentary term in 2025.
But Germany’s position has caused friction with its allies, particularly the UK, which is keen to sell 48 new Typhoon aircraft to Saudi. The Typhoons are built by a pan-European consortium in the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain and each country can veto exports of the planes to other nations.
The UK fears Saudi Arabia, which is looking to replace its ageing fleet of Tornadoes, might pursue a rival offer of Rafale jets from the French company Dassault.
Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, raised the issue with Scholz last summer, extracting a commitment to explore a way forward.
Baerbock’s shift has angered many in her party.
Sara Nanni, the Greens’ spokesperson on defence, told Der Spiegel it came as a “surprise” after the government “committed to not supplying Saudi Arabia with Eurofighters”, given the Gulf kingdom’s massive bombardments of Yemen.
Svenja Appuhn, co-chair of the Greens’ youth organisation, told Spiegel the government was in danger of “prostrating itself before one of the most terrible regimes in the world”.
Baerbock said Saudi Arabia had long known of the risk the Houthi rebels posed to security in the Middle East. She said it was an “open secret” that the Saudi air force was using its Eurofighters to shoot down missiles and drones fired by Houthi rebels against Israel.
The foreign minister added that it was remarkable that Israel and Saudi Arabia had not pulled the plug on the process of normalising their relations after Hamas’s Oct 7 attack.
“You have to see the government’s [new] position on Eurofighters in the light of all these developments,” government spokesman Hebestreit said.
