France to bill Australia over submarine deal, as Britain’s Johnson tells Macron: ‘Donnez-moi un break’

French defense contractor Naval Group is preparing to send Australia a bill after a $66 billion contract was sunk by a secret deal between Canberra, Washington and London to share technology on nuclear-powered submarines and form AUKUS, a new three-nation defense alliance.

Naval Group chief executive Pierre Éric Pommellet told France’s Le Figaro newspaper in an article published Wednesday that a bill would be sent to Canberra in the coming weeks. Australia had agreed in 2016 to buy 12 diesel-powered submarines from the French, and the break fee — on top of the more than $1 billion reportedly spent during the design phase — could be substantial.

Pommellet said that Australia had told his company, which is majority-owned by the French taxpayer, to go ahead with a new phase of the program on the very morning last week that the contract was terminated. “We were in shock. This decision was announced to us without any notice,” he told the newspaper. “Very few companies have experienced such a [brutal] scenario.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson [told] reporters in Washington on Wednesday, in a mash-up of schoolboy French and English, that it was time for Paris to “Prenez un grip” (“Get a grip”) and “Donnez-moi un break” (“Give me a break”).

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