ZURICH: Airbus has offered to assemble Eurofighter aircraft in Switzerland if Bern picks it for a 6 billion Swiss franc ($6.5 billion) defense 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 US 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 aging 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 Defense 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 favor the F-35 and those who would prefer a European deal to help smooth relations with the EU after Switzerland ditched a draft bilateral treaty after years of talks.
