Budget overruns and culture clashes over long vacations plagued the $50 billion submarine deal France got booted from in favor of the US and UK

• France's deal to build Australia's new submarines was dogged by years of problems.
• They came to a head this week when Australia ditched France and struck a deal with the UK and US.
• As costs ballooned, officials were "stunned" by the French taking a month vacation each summer.

France received only a few hours' notice that Australia planned to cancel a $50 billion submarine contract with French shipbuilders, The New York Times reported, sparking fury in Paris.

But the deal had been plagued for several years by culture clashes between the two countries as well as lengthy disputes over budgets.

French officials were enraged this week after Australia announced it was cancelling a deal for French firm Naval Group to build its new fleet of submarines.

Instead, Australia signed a security pact between the UK and US, under which Australia is due to build a generation of nuclear submarines, drawing on American and British expertise.

While officials in France appeared blindsided by the move - with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian accusing Australia of a "stab in the back" - the deal had been on shaky ground almost since its inception in 2016.

Extensive budget disputes that meant that the deal wasn't formally signed until 2019, three years after Australia announced its deal with France's Naval Group, in which the government is the majority shareholder.

The project to replace Australia's aging Collins-class submarines was supposed to cost $36.5 billion, Politico reported, but the cost had nearly doubled by this year to an estimated $66 billion.

The deal had been further complicated by Australia's insistence on Naval Group completing much of the construction work in Australia.

When former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the deal in 2016, he said 90% of the construction work would take place within Australia and create 2,800 domestic jobs.

By 2021, Naval Group had downgraded that figure to 60%, and had reportedly indicated that it could be downgraded further still, according to Politico.

Culture clashes between Australian and French workforces were another sign of the shaky foundations of the deal.

Naval Group in 2019 admitted that the two nations did not see eye-to-eye, and said it was designing courses for French expatriates in Australia so they could learn how to "behave, how to understand, and decode," ABC News Australia reported.

An example of the gulf in working practices was when Australian officials were left "stunned" to hear discussion of "la rentrée," the process by which French workers would get ready to restart work after the whole company stopped working in August for a month-long vacation

French officials in return were likewise said to be surprised that Australian officials expected meetings to begin on time, citing a French phenomenon known as a "diplomatic 15 minutes" whereby people were considered to be on time as long as they arrived within 15 minutes of the start time.

The report also mentioned French workers requesting more understanding of their need for long lunch breaks.

While Australia has announced its decision to terminate the deal, it is not clear what the consequences of cancelling such a lucrative contract will be.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has challenged Australia to explain how it plans to exit the contracts it signed as part of the deal.

"This is not over," he told the radio station Franceinfo on Thursday, Sky News reported.

"We're going to need clarifications. We have contracts."

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also not given details of how Australia plans to build its own fleet of submarines without Naval Group's involvement.

He estimated this week that preparations for the project would take 18 months, the Guardian reported.