Airbus Offers to Assemble Eurofighters in Switzerland to Win a $ 6.5 Billion Deal – Report

ZURICH, June 27 (Reuters) – Airbus (AIR.PA) has offered to assemble Eurofighter aircraft in Switzerland if Bern selects it for an armaments contract worth 6 billion Swiss francs (6.5 billion US dollars) , a top seller of the consortium told a Swiss Sunday newspaper.

Germany, Italy, Spain and Great Britain, which manufacture the Eurofighter, have also offered Bern extensive political cooperation should it win the Swiss competition between two US and two European fighter jets scheduled for delivery by 2025.

The Swiss cabinet will decide on Wednesday between the Eurofighter, the Rafale of France’s Dassault (AVMD.PA), Boeings (BA.N) F / A-18 Super Hornet and Lockheed Martins (LMT.N) F35-A Lightning II to deal with aging F / A-18 to replace Hornets.

Swiss television reported last week that the F-35 had the best technical and financial properties in a Swiss evaluation, but the final decision was still open. Continue reading

The SonntagsZeitung quoted Bernhard Brenner, Head of Sales at Airbus Defense and Space, as saying that neutral Switzerland should not rely on this assessment alone.

“The economic and political elements are just as important,” he said. The newspaper said that Airbus alone submitted a 700-page dossier on economic “offsets” relating to subsidiary deals where contract costs are returned to local suppliers.

The government is divided between those who support the F-35 and those who prefer a European agreement to improve relations with the European Union after Switzerland abandoned a draft bilateral treaty after years of talks.

The defense ministers of Germany, Italy, Spain and Great Britain wrote to Bern last year, offering not only military cooperation such as training, but also partnerships in business, energy, science, the environment, transport, cybersecurity and infrastructure, Brenner told the paper.

France has been pushing Bern to vote for the Rafale, while US President Joe Biden discussed the deal with Swiss leaders in Geneva this month to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Ministry of Defense did not want to comment on the incident.

($ 1 = 0.9175 Swiss Francs)

Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Alexander Smith

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