Greece Signs for Two Italian FREMMs on 8 September as Carlo Bergamini and Virginio Fasan Change Flags
Greece has put a date on a deal that has been circling for nearly a year. The Hellenic Ministry of National Defence confirmed that the implementing arrangement covering the transfer of two Italian Navy FREMM frigates will be signed in Rome on 8 September.
What is being signed
The two ships are the first pair of the Bergamini class: Carlo Bergamini (F 590) and Virginio Fasan (F 591). Both entered Italian service in 2013, which puts them at roughly fifteen years old by the time they change flags.
Signatures will come from Greece’s General Directorate for Defence Equipment and Investments and its Italian armaments counterpart. Handover is staggered: Carlo Bergamini in the first half of 2028, Virginio Fasan in the first half of 2029.
Two elements of the text matter beyond the hulls themselves. The arrangement leaves the door open to two additional FREMMs, and it commits Greek yards to a role in maintenance work and in adapting new systems to the ships — the industrial participation clause Athens now attaches to every major naval programme.
The platform
FREMM is the Franco-Italian multi-mission frigate programme. The Italian branch, built by Fincantieri as the Bergamini class, displaces roughly 6,700 tonnes fully loaded and comes in two flavours: an anti-submarine warfare variant and a general-purpose one. Carlo Bergamini and Virginio Fasan are general-purpose ships.
The combat fit centres on a Leonardo 127mm main gun, vertical launch cells for Aster 15 and Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles, MBDA’s Teseo family of anti-ship missiles and an integrated sonar suite. The design’s selling point has always been scalability — one hull covering air defence, submarine hunting, maritime security and naval gunfire support — and it is what has carried FREMM into export orders from Egypt, Morocco and, most recently, Portugal’s €3.9 billion FREMM EVO buy.
How it got here
The groundwork was laid on 29 September 2025 in La Spezia, where Greek Defence Minister Nikos Dendias and his Italian counterpart Guido Crosetto signed a memorandum of understanding and a declaration of intent. The formula agreed then was “2+2” — two ships transferred, two on option.
Dendias described the vessels at the time as “two or four ships, about a decade old, with excellent capabilities and in excellent condition.” The document due in Rome converts that political framing into binding delivery dates, maintenance responsibilities and system adaptation commitments.
Why buy second-hand
The reasoning is arithmetic. A new-build frigate typically takes six to eight years from contract to commissioning. An in-service ship, after a refit and system adaptation, can be operational under a new flag in two or three.
Athens is already taking four FDI Belharra frigates from France and upgrading its MEKO 200HN fleet. The Italian FREMMs plug the gap between those programmes, adding air defence and anti-submarine capacity in the window before the new hulls arrive.
The trade-off is equally clear. A transferred ship arrives with a meaningful share of its hull life already spent, and its through-life support stays tethered to the original builder. Buyers accept that in exchange for speed.
The regional picture
Naval recapitalisation across the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean has accelerated sharply since 2020. Greece is running French and Italian supply lines in parallel. Turkey has taken the opposite route, concentrating on domestic construction: the first İstif-class frigate under the MİLGEM programme, TCG İstanbul (F-515), commissioned in 2024, while the TF-2000 air defence destroyer and the newer Frigate-115 and Frigate-140 designs are in build and design phases respectively.
Neither model is straightforwardly better. Transfers buy time; domestic construction buys yard capacity, design authority and sustainment independence. Which one proves more durable over the next decade will shape the balance in these waters more than any single hull count.
Sources
- Hellenic Ministry of National Defence announcement, 26 August 2026
- Greece–Italy memorandum of understanding and declaration of intent, La Spezia, 29 September 2025
- Fincantieri, Bergamini-class FREMM specifications
