Germany Will Join a French Nuclear Exercise for the First Time — Two Rafale Land at Nörvenich

The council's conclusions carry the commitment in one line: further steps this year "including German conventional participation in a French nuclear exercise." Chancellor Merz confirmed the timing — conventional German forces, before the end of this year; the official texts name no exercise, though press reporting points to the Forces Aériennes Stratégiques' "Poker" series. The machinery behind it predates the week: the Nuclear Steering Group, jointly chaired by president and chancellor, was established in the Macron-Merz declaration of 2 March — the council at Nörvenich is that structure producing its first observable output.

The boundary is as explicit as the opening. France shares an exercise, not authority: Macron's doctrine, stated at Île Longue in March, keeps the ultimate decision, its planning and its implementation with the French president alone. What Paris argued at Brühl is that dispersal itself deters — spreading French air power across European territory "creates more uncertainty for our adversaries" by diluting the deterrent's footprint. Seven further states have reportedly responded positively to the French offer alongside the UK: Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

Participation without employment authority. What the exercise demonstrates is a European willingness to build around the French deterrent — basing access, tanker choreography, conventional escort — while the deterrent itself stays entirely national. That is a real change from zero, and it is deliberately less than nuclear sharing: no German aircraft carries a French weapon, and no German voice enters the decision chain. As Großwald Signal No. 105 read the council, whether this hardens into something a planner can rely on depends on funding, basing and doctrine the council did not decide — the same meeting cut the joint MGCS tank to a research programme, leaving the nuclear step as the substantive one.