Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz signed a joint declaration last week committing France and Germany to build a European rival to Palantir’s military software.
The declaration follows both countries’ domestic intelligence services dropping the American firm in favour of ChapsVision’s ArgonOS platform earlier this year. It arrives barely six weeks after Paris and Berlin buried the Future Combat Air System, their joint fighter jet programme, following nine years of industrial disputes.
The new software ambition asks whether two capitals with a poor record on joint procurement can deliver something Europe needs.
A Retreat From Palantir
The retreat from Palantir started months before Friday’s declaration. France’s domestic intelligence agency, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure, chose ChapsVision’s ArgonOS software over Palantir in June, months after renewing the American company’s contract.
Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, made the same choice, and the Bundeswehr removed Palantir from its defence cloud procurement altogether.
Palantir chief executive Alex Karp defended his company’s technology, telling a German newspaper it operates “on every serious battlefield in the world,” and questioned whether Germany could afford to reject its capabilities. His warning did little to slow the turn towards French and German software.
A Wider Declaration of Intent
Friday’s declaration carries the retreat from spy agencies into military and industrial territory. The two governments committed to examining a European sovereign digital backbone covering data-centric security, artificial intelligence and cloud services.
France’s Arcadia platform, an AI-powered command system, was named as a starting point alongside unspecified German equivalents. Officials also launched a partnership between Germany’s new AI Security Institute and its French counterpart, Inesia, intended to police frontier AI models under EU rules.
France, Germany and the United Kingdom agreed separately to examine joint long-range missiles reaching 2,500 kilometres, and work proceeded on the Main Ground Combat System, the tank programme meant to replace the Leopard 2 and the Leclerc.
The Jet Programme’s Old Wounds
Cooperation between Paris and Berlin on military hardware carries a rockier record than any software plan admits on its own. The Future Combat Air System collapsed in June after Dassault and Airbus failed to resolve a dispute over who would lead development of the crewed fighter jet.
Dassault, builder of the Rafale, wanted a dominant role; Airbus, in which both governments hold roughly a tenth of the shares, wanted a more even partnership.
A German mediator concluded in April that a joint aircraft was no longer feasible, and Merz conveyed the final decision to Macron in June, nine years and roughly €3.2 billion into the programme.
Scepticism Greets The New Plan
The software ambition inherits political weaknesses similar to those which delayed the fighter programme. A senior NATO commander told Politico earlier this year no real European option to Palantir’s Maven system existed for battlefield data processing, a claim the joint declaration directly contradicts.
Digital rights advocates warn that swapping an American vendor for a European one solves little if the underlying software still expands government surveillance of citizens. In Britain, lawmakers have pressed the National Health Service to reconsider a £330 million Palantir contract, after reports that outside staff accessed identifiable patient data before it was anonymised.
What the Duo Must Prove
Software costs far less to fund than a sixth-generation fighter jet, and can be built and tested in separate pieces rather than as one indivisible aircraft. This gives Paris and Berlin room to fail smaller and adjust faster than Dassault and Airbus ever managed. It also removes the single obvious flashpoint, since no French or German firm has publicly demanded sole command of Arcadia the way Dassault demanded leadership of the fighter.
Whether the new room proves enough rests on whether the two governments can agree on control of the resulting platform once real budgets and workshare are on the table. Europe’s own defence history offers little comfort here, but a shared distrust of dependence on Washington may prove a sturdier glue than shared ambition alone.
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Read also:
FCAS: Bilateral Deals Break Expensive Collective Defence
Palantir: UK Fraud Files and the Swiss Press
Palantir’s European Expansion: Tech Dependence Wrapped in Security
