France officially wants to turn the page on the painful episode of the rupture in September 2021 by Australia of the 56 billion euro submarine contract which had opened a crisis between Paris and Canberra. After the formalization, Saturday June 11, of the agreement finally reached, after eight months of negotiations, with the French manufacturer Naval Group, France “take note”according to the expression of the Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, in Singapore, where the Shangri-La Dialogue, an important forum on security and defence, was held. VSshe’ will allow us to look forward”added the Minister.
Falling overnight from Friday to Saturday June 11, this agreement, which was the subject of meticulous discussions bordered by armies of lawyers, was announced by the new Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, from the newly elected Labor government. A deal worth 555 million euros which he presented as “just and fair”. Words taken up by Naval Group, Saturday, in a press release confirming this statement and welcoming in passing the work of its teams during the five years which preceded the rupture, that is to say some 350 employees in Australia, and 650 in France.
“It is rather good news that it ends fairly quickly, rather than going into litigation which could last for years”, commented to AFP David Robin, central union representative in Cherbourg (Manche) following the announcement of this agreement. Since the termination of the contract, “we bounced back well” and “We also don’t despair of having another export contract as we had for Brazil, India, Malaysia”, he added. The sale of these twelve conventionally powered submarines represented around 10% of Naval Group’s activity, which had already earned some 840 million euros since the signing of the contract.
The Australian taxpayer will not have been spared by this change of footing of the previous government, that of the Conservative Scott Morrison, when it rallied to a new strategic alliance with the United States and the United Kingdom, called Aukus, which sacrificed the French ships. With these 550 million euros, Canberra will have spent more than $4.2 billion for a stillborn program. Since the intergovernmental agreement between France and Australia in 2016, large sums have indeed been committed to support both the cost of managing the program (salaries, subcontracting, etc.), the construction of the shipyard in Adelaide, or the design and engineering part of Lockheed Martin, which was to supply the combat system for the submarines.
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