VILNIUS (Reuters) – Germany will not deliver Eurofighter combat aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the near future, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday.
“There will be no decision on the delivery of Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia any time soon,” Scholz told reporters on the second day of a NATO summit in Vilnius.
A government source told Reuters that Germany would not take a decision on the issue during this legislative term, which ends in 2025.
Earlier on Wednesday, Germany’s SZ newspaper cited an internal government document as saying that “applications for export licences for Saudi Arabia will be postponed until the end of the war in Yemen.”
Saudi Arabia leads a coalition that has been battling the Iranian-aligned Houthis in Yemen since 2015. The war has killed tens of thousands of people and left millions hungry.
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold, Writing by Miranda Murray, Editing by Rachel More and Friederike Heine)
