Italy - believe it or not - has top notch expertise in producing military and space technology. I recall they also export lots of military equipment, of all types.

As TFA points out, there's a competing French-German-Spanish 6th gen fighter project, FCAS. FCAS is apparently already in some kind of trouble due to conflicting requirements. The French want a follow-up to the Rafale, that is a carrier-capable, multi-role plane with long-range strike capability, crucially including nuclear strike. The Germans want none of that, they want primarily an air defense fighter.

For more details, see https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...

Sweden is producing its own domestic fighter jets to this day (Saab Gripen). It’s latest generation was unveiled in 2017. So they have the experience but my assumption is that developing a next gen fighter is just too expensive and wasteful for such a small country.

Saab already has a lot of cooperation with BAE Systems (British) and the GE engines were built by former Volvo Aero (acquired by British GKN)

Dassault doesn't work well in collaborative projects. Germany keeps saying that it will buy lots of aircraft to get a large workshare then scales back the real order.