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GERMAN AEROSPACE INDUSTRY OPTIMISTIC

"1999 has been a positive year for the German Aerospace Industry (LRI). The national LRI is both economically and technologically successful. It has furthermore developed into a powerful strategic key industry", summarised the President of the Federal Association of the German Aerospace Industry (BDLI) Dr. Gustav Humbert during the annual press conference of the association in Berlin in mid February.

Last year Airbus Industrie managed to outstrip its competitor Boeing with a market share of 55 percent for the first time. Fairchild Dornier was able to win the first customer for its new regional jet 728JET with the German Lufthansa. These successes stem on the one hand from the industry's restructure program and on the other from the government's Aviation Research Program (LuFo II).

However, this year's subsidy is lower than before. For this reason Humbert intends to remind the government to open the so-called "investment billion" for the Federal Ministries of Education and Science (BMBF) and of Economy and Technology also to the interests of aviation.

In view of bringing the industry into line with Europe it was furthermore important that German capacities would not being neglected one-sidedly in a European structure like the new EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company). According to Humbert it was necessary "to create the same conditions for competition for all involved countries. This applies to technology subsidies as well as for export guidelines for armaments".

Bearing this in mind the BDLI boss criticised the tightening of export guidelines as decided by the Federal Cabinet at the end of January. "It is an independent initiative of the German Government and thus endangers the European co-operation capability of the national defence industry". Guidelines must be harmonised within the European context.

The pleasing development in civilian aircraft production is according to Humbert "directly opposed to an increasingly dramatic situation in the defence industry, which has been brought about by years of cuts in the defence budget. These reductions do not only endanger the future and alliance capability of the Federal Armed Forces. Whether the defence industry is able to survive at all is uncertain".

The defence budget has been decreased steadily since 1990, and turnover of the industry involved dropped by 51 percent. Humbert commented, "Jobs in this industry had to be reduced by 57 percent".

The reduction of investments for new acquisitions is said to have had negative consequences. This share was lowered from 21 to 15 percent of the defence budget. The BDLI President calls upon the Federal Government to revise its attitude regarding these cuts.

Humbert warned in the same context of the loss of important technological core capabilities. This situation had already occurred with guided missiles and communication and guiding systems.

Finally he could not resist referring to the 36th Munich Conference for Security Policy, where a US government representative had criticised, what was in his view, a German defence budget which was too low.

In fact the German defence budget is nowadays only 1,3 percent of the gross domestic product. On the NATO ranking list Germany takes the penultimate position ahead of Luxembourg.

From page 32 of FLUG REVUE 4/2000