Jospin attacked over Aerospatiale plans
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Your support makes all the difference.The fate of Europe's $40bn aerospace industry rests in the hands of the newly elected French Socialist government, senior industrialists warned in Paris yesterday. They said this could stand in the way of industry cost-savings estimated at up to pounds 10bn.
In an unusually outspoken attack, Dassault, the family-owned French warplane builder, joined with BAe in predicting France could lose its place as the European industry consolidates if Prime Minister Lionel Jospin abandoned plans to privatise Aerospatiale.
The French administration is facing a week of intense lobbying during the Paris Air Show before a speech by Mr Jospin next Saturday, in which he is expected to spell out his industrial strategy for the first time since winning power.
Margaret Beckett, the UK President of the Board of Trade, arrives in Paris today for talks with her European counterparts, including the new Communist French Minister of Transport. She will back BAe's drive to consolidate Europe's fragmented aerospace and defence industries in line with rationalisation in the US.
It emerged yesterday that BAe has calculated cost savings worth between pounds 1.5bn and pounds 2.5bn from each stage in the European merger jigsaw.
BAe also made clear its continued interest in combining with GEC. John Weston, a BAe managing director, said a GEC merger did not have to wait for wider cross-border restructuring.
BAe foresees using Airbus as the foundation of a broader consolidation, linking Europe's civil and defence industries into one company.
In January, the four Airbus partners agreed to turn the consortium into a fully-fledged company by 1999. At the same time Aerospatiale would have to be privatised and merge with Dassault to strengthen France's hand at the negotiating table. But the new French government has raised the possibility before the election that it would abandon the privatisation plans.
Serge Dassault, the company chairman, said the restructuring issue had become urgent. "Our partners will not accept our participation in these negotiations unless we come to the table on an equal footing with them, that is to say, as a privatised industry."
Mr Weston hinted the UK and Germany could not wait for ever for France and may widen negotiations to include Spain or Sweden. "You've got to feel there's a degree of comedy about all this," he said in Paris.
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