07:11 GMT, June 12, 2009 It seems that European aerospace company EADS has reached an important success in keeping the A400M programme alive, as French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel are said to support the company’s demand for an additional six months to re-negotiate the delivery timetable for the military transport aircraft. As defpro reported last week the company was asking the leaders of the seven nations involved in the A400M programme for this extra time. This step was indeed needed since a first three-month extension, granted by the OCCAR organisation on 1st April, is to expire by the end of June. In turn, that first extension was legally needed because based on the terms of the original contract, with the A400M still not having flown by 1st April 2009 the seven countries were entitled to cancel their orders. EADS was expected to be able to formulate a new programme schedule by the end of June, but this has proved not possible.
The leaders of France and Germany now said that the partner nations involved in the programme _ Spain, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Turkey _will need a further six months to agree on how to continue. The Financial Times quoted French President Nicholas Sarkozy as saying, that he and German chancellor Angela Merkel had “decided that it would be good to give ourselves about six more months to continue discussions to find the best solution possible”.
Ms Merkel immediately confirmed this remarks, saying “we are in complete agreement. We will give ourselves a few months and then we’ll see.”
Since the €20 billion transport aircraft project is running three years late and billions of euros over budget, the governments have the possibility to cancel the entire programme and force EADS to return €5.7 billion in pre-payments. This possibility was enshrined in the contract signed in 2003 for 180 transport aircraft.
Since two major European leaders are apparently willing to keep the programme alive and obviously enough have no interest to ruin the main European aeronautic, space and defence company with a deadly payback obligation, the new “grace period” may help to find an agreement which is acceptable for both sides. This will not be easy, though, as the UK is ready to jump off the A400M programme and would be happy to receive some money back. Beyond that, the technical problems are still unsolved.
An UK MoD spokesperson said that London remains committed to the original timeline and that “a decision is expected to be reached before the end of the current moratorium on the future of the A400M programme” at the end of June. This would seem to suggest that despite attempts and maintaining a united decision-making process, London may select to go its own way.
Luca Bonsignore
