The exact same happened in Belgium. They ordered F35 to replace F16 because American nukes are stored on Belgian territory. On paper there was some free market stuff about looking for the best deal, but in reality the choice was never there, it had to be American jets.

Now, I’m not overly enthusiastic about replacing USA nukes with French nukes in other EU countries. The time has probably come to properly unify an EU army as a whole, and nukes becoming a French division in a EU-defense structure, rather than a French division in a French structure ‘visiting’ other countries.