France will sell three frigates to Greece for three billion euros – bfm business

Emmanuel Macron and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis signed a € 3 billion military contract on Tuesday for Athens’ order for three frigates. A 4th is optional.

After the Australian “betrayal”, export orders returned to Naval Group. France will sell three “Belharra” frigates to Athens. The Minister of the Armed Forces specifies that a fourth is optional. These ships are FDI-HN frigates, buildings weighing 4,600 tonnes and over 120 m long, equipped with ultra-modern radars designed by Thales. These frigates will be built in France, in Lorient.

It is a “testimony of confidence and demonstration of the quality of the French offer”, declared Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace after signing the contract.

Built in collaboration with Thales and the European missile manufacturer MBDA, the FDI, called Belharra for export, has a tonnage of 4,200 tonnes. These buildings are the intermediate size between the GoWind corvettes (2,500 tons) and the Multi-mission Frigates (FREMM, 6,000 tons). Equipped with anti-ship, anti-aircraft, anti-submarine and special forces projection capabilities, the IDF are adaptable according to the missions.

The announcement of this contract, for which a letter of intent had been signed in 2019 by the Greek government, comes after months of discussions between Paris and Athens. Naval Group was in competition with the Netherlands, Germany but also the United States. According to our sources, Greece would have rejected the American offer because of costly maintenance, but also after the American method on the case of Australian submarines.

Greece was also in discussions for the purchase of three Godwind class corvettes which would bring the total amount of the contract to around five billion euros. For the moment, no information has been given on these buildings.

This contract comes at a strategic time for France. On September 15, Australia announced the termination of a contract for 12 conventionally powered submarines. This Tuesday, at 5 p.m., Pierre-Éric Pommellet, CEO of Naval Group, will be heard in the National Assembly by two committees, that of Economic Affairs and Defense. The object is to know how the group, of which the State is the main shareholder at 62.5% (and at 35% by Thales) could not anticipate the cancellation of the contract which had been the subject of debates for months in Australia.