Flexible Airbus

EADS has refused state support for the project to create a new aircraft

Today, as expected, the supervisory board of the German-French defense and space concern EADS will announce the official launch of an ambitious project to create a new generation Airbus A-350. At the same time, the concern intends to abandon the use of government subsidies in this project, which eliminated the last barrier to the launch of the A-350: in 2004, a financial dispute broke out between Brussels and Washington regarding the methods of lending and allocating government subsidies to the European A-350 aircraft and its overseas competitor Boeing-787. Both sides laid out their grievances in mutual complaints to the WTO, and the EU trade commissioner has since failed to reach a conciliatory agreement with his US counterpart. The price of the issue, according to Boeing management, is as follows: in this aircraft sector in the next 20 years there will be a demand for 25 thousand new aircraft with a total value of $2 trillion. In other words, we are talking about the largest dispute in the WTO in the entire history of this organization.

The United States accuses the creators of the Airbus A-350 project of using large financial investments from the EU and its individual member countries. The cost of developing a new machine is estimated at $4.4 billion, $1.5 billion of which was supposed to be borne by the governments of Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain. For their part, the Europeans accuse their American competitors of receiving government subsidies in the amount of $5 billion for the development of the Boeing 787. In addition, American aircraft manufacturers receive indirect support from the US federal government through the placement of multibillion-dollar orders for the production of weapons. The Dreamliner, as the Boeing-787 being developed in America was dubbed in America, should go into mass production by 2008 - two years earlier than the Airbus A-350.

The decision to refuse (even temporarily) from the raised funding for the Airbus A-350 project looks very unexpected. After all, less than a month ago, the heads of the EADS concern - German Tom Enders and Frenchman Noel Forgear - in a joint interview with the Financial Times, relied on the need for government subsidies for the successful start of the project of a new European Airbus. “In this way, the fairness of the upcoming agreements with the United States will not be jeopardized,” Mr. Enders said. But until now, EADS has not received any additional state budget money or agreement with its overseas competitor. Nothing has worked out yet with subsidies from the British government - Airbus tried to get 380 million pounds for the Airbus project.

EADS seems to be planning to rely on its own financial strength. His representative recently did not confirm that EADS would be able to independently finance the new Airbus, but nevertheless made it clear that the concern intends to show “flexibility” in this matter. It will consist in the fact that the concern will do without repayable loans from the countries participating in the project: Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain. Thus, EADS will at least for some time restrain the further escalation of the dispute with its American competitor. And to some extent, it will retain the honor of its uniform: with its refusal, the concern is preempting the upcoming joint statement of these countries regarding their readiness to consider lending issues only after the start of the project itself. However, the French were ready to start financing the A-350 project in the near future. But, as La Tribune reported yesterday, France decided not to pay the money “immediately”: “We want real negotiations between Europe and the United States,” the newspaper quoted French Transport Minister Dominique Perben as saying. “The implementation of these future supports will not happen immediately.” The state budget for 2006, the minister emphasized, so as not to be unfounded, does not provide for such payments.

Yuri Shpakov, Berlin