On 12 February 2024, Berlin, Paris and Warsaw pitched for the Weimar Triangle as the new centrepiece for the EU’s defence (Alipour & Bourgery-Gonse, 2024), aiming to enhance defence capability. Following these discussions, in April, the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius recommended Poland join the ‘Main Ground Combat System’ (MGCS). By June, Poland indicated its willingness to join the Franco-German projects: the ‘Future Combat Air System’ (FCAS) and MGCS projects (Alipour, 2024a). Despite this momentum, defence ministers of Poland and Germany remain silent when journalists ask for more details.In June, France also deepened its military ties with Germany and Poland (Kayali, 2024), indicating growing momentum for defence collaboration within the Weimar Triangle. By aligning national defence priorities, France, Germany, and Poland could play a more substantial role in defence and transform, at some point, the Weimar Triangle into a defence alliance.

Historically, the Weimar Triangle has made outstanding achievements. However, cooperation has not been inconsistent during the last decades, with partners experiencing challenges of trust and misalignment. The evolving international landscape, characterised by the intensification of conflict in Ukraine since 2022 and the upcoming United States (US) election, has prompted new developments and investments in European defence cooperation.

This paper will discuss the potential of the Weimar Triangle to develop into a more robust defence alliance and the importance of Poland’s integration into the FCAS and the MGCS consortia. Firstly, the paper will begin with a background analysis of the Weimar Triangle cooperation, and an overview of the military expenditure of the partners, the FCAS and the MGCS projects. Moreover, it will draw on the international landscape and specifically Poland’s situation that fosters defence collaboration. Secondly, this paper will analyse the current obstacles threatening cooperation. To conclude, this paper will examine Poland’s defence policy and relations with its key partners to assess the feasibility of integration within both consortia.