Athens, Greece – Greece is interested in jointly developing weapons with Israel, Greek officials have told Al Jazeera.

“We’re an excellent customer of Israeli systems,” Angelos Syrigos, chairman of the Greek parliament’s Defence Affairs Committee, told Al Jazeera. “The leap in our defence relationship will happen when there’s co-production of defence systems and common planning.”

Greece is nominally a member of the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) formed by Germany in 2022 as a vehicle to sell mostly German air defence systems such as Iris-T and Skyranger. But Greece is not known to have entered into talks to buy those systems.

In contrast, Greece’s Ministry of National Defence last month formed negotiating committees to buy three additional missile defence systems, Spyder, Barak and David’s Sling, produced by the Israel-owned Rafael and Israeli Aerospace Industries, worth a potential 3.1 billion euros ($3.5bn).