Airbus offers to assemble Eurofighter in Switzerland to win $6.5 billion deal
ZURICH - Airbus has offered to assemble Eurofighter aircraft in Switzerland if Bern picks it for a 6 billion Swiss franc ($6.5 billion) defence contract, a top salesman at the consortium told a Swiss Sunday newspaper.
Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain, who make the Eurofighter,
have also offered Bern sweeping political cooperation should it win the Swiss
contest between two U.S. and two European fighter jets, which are to be
delivered by 2025.
The Swiss cabinet is set to decide on Wednesday among the
Eurofighter, the Rafale from France's Dassault, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet
and Lockheed Martin's F35-A Lightning II to replace ageing F/A-18 Hornets.
Swiss television reported last week that the F-35 provided
the best technical and financial features in a Swiss evaluation, but the final
decision was still open.
The SonntagsZeitung paper quoted Bernhard Brenner, head of
sales at Airbus Defence and Space, as saying neutral Switzerland should not go
by that evaluation alone.
"The economic and political elements are just as
important," he said. The paper said Airbus has submitted a 700-page
dossier on economic "offsets" alone, referring to side deals that
funnel contract costs back to local suppliers.
The government is split among those who favour the F-35 and
those who would prefer a European deal to help smoothe relations with the
European Union after Switzerland ditched a draft bilateral treaty after years
of talks.
The defence ministers of Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain
wrote to Bern last year offering not just military cooperation such as
training, but also partnerships in economics, energy, science, the environment,
transport, cybersecurity and infrastructure, Brenner told the paper.
France has been pushing Bern to pick the Rafale, while U.S.
President Joe Biden discussed the deal with Swiss leaders while in Geneva this
month to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The defence ministry has declined to comment on the process.
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