of its industrial activity and, more broadly, the economic challenges facing the aircraft construction sector. The Airbus Group is, of course, a major industrial player for our country and for Europe, with high value added and a significant positive contribution to our trade balance of over €32 billion in 2025. I also recall that Airbus employs 60,000 staff in France and 165,000 worldwide, 90% of them in Europe. Finally, the group invested €3.3 billion in research and development, 40% of it in France. You are therefore a major player in innovation in our country, and we know how important that is for our growth. Your order book is full, with more than 9,000 aircraft, representing nearly 10 years of production, and the ramp-up of this production is part of the challenges you will have to meet. Among these challenges are also technological choices to be made for the replacement, by around 2035-2040, of the A320 family and to prepare for tomorrow's aircraft, whether in terms of materials, artificial intelligence, or electrification. And we of course hope that this hearing will allow you to present these issues to us. Airbus is also a historic partner of the French armed forces and thus contributes to the protection of our strategic autonomy, whether through military helicopters, strategic transport aircraft such as the A400M, tanker aircraft, or future maritime patrol programs. I will not dwell on defense considerations, which fall under another committee in this assembly, but it seemed important to me to recall this important aspect of your industrial activity. You can also tell us what the GOP AERBUS plans to do to contribute even more strongly to the protection of our industrial sovereignty by relocating critical industrial capabilities to the national territory. Similarly, we would be interested in details of what Airbus proposes in the space field, that of security, particularly regarding sovereign constellations and solutions for crisis management and the fight against forest fires. I am thinking in particular of satellites, drones, helicopters, and aircraft such as the A400M. Before giving you the floor, Mr. Faury, for about fifteen minutes, I would like, to introduce our exchanges, to ask you a few initial questions. Airbus plans to reach the figure of around 870 commercial aircraft deliveries in 2026. To what extent has the group progressed so far towards achieving this objective, and what are the main challenges you face today to achieve it in a highly competitive environment marked by the strong state support enjoyed by certain players, notably China? What do you concretely expect from the French and European authorities to support and improve the competitiveness of the French aeronautical industry? The European Union has just decided to mobilize, through the European Investment Bank, a envelope of €3 billion in financing to support Airbus's long-term research and development activities. Can you come back to this important announcement to tell us both the projects it should finance and the issues attached to it for the cutting-edge technologies of the European aeronautical industry? Airbus and the entire air sector have set the objective of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Sustainable fuels remain available in limited volumes, and Airbus has pushed back beyond 2035 the arrival of a commercial hydrogen aircraft. This is the so-called ZEROe project. And what are today the concrete levers you really have to achieve this objective? And finally, the A350F has just made its first test flight and should enable Airbus to return to the market for large freighter aircraft, historically dominated by your competitor Boeing. Do you think this aircraft can really reverse the balance of power with Boeing in the cargo aircraft market, and what are its main competitive advantages? Mr. Chairman, we have no doubt that you will be able to enlighten us on all these subjects, which are absolutely essential for an industry that is highly strategic for our country, a flagship of our country's industry. And we thank you in advance for your answers, and I now give you the floor, and you alone, for about fifteen minutes in total.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Well, you have already said a great many things, so it is a good starting point. I will perhaps begin by giving a quick identity card of who we are, without repeating what you have just said, and then put some of our challenges, our issues, our objectives, and the points that seem to me most important to share with you for the Economic Affairs Committee into perspective. For us, our identity card is that we are a European-character company. We operate in global markets with competitors who are essentially competitors from the other major blocs, the United States, China, and in some businesses also European companies, with clients who are essentially global. So the playing field is on that scale. We are a group with around 160,000 employees, as you said, in the core of the Airbus group, but we also have significant stakes in companies such as MBDA and Ariane, which allow us to have scale with other partners to be competitive worldwide and to be able to invest, prosper, grow, and secure the future of the company. We are 80% in civil activities and 20% in military. Indeed, I will spend a lot of time on the military part for the reasons you have cited, but it is a very important part of what we do, particularly in the security environment in which we operate today, and particularly because there too the right scale to work effectively is the European scale, and so Airbus is a player in European cooperation which is very, very important in this period. We have three main businesses. The commercial aircraft business, which is the largest part of what we do in terms of revenue. The defense and space businesses, therefore predominantly military, but in space we are both civil and military, and helicopters, where we are also world leaders with a roughly 50-50 balance between the civil and military parts of the activity. And the 20% military activities I mentioned earlier. The projection is that we will stay at roughly this 80-20 balance in the years to come, in the decade to come. Which shows that the military will grow as fast as the civil. Because indeed one of the challenges I am going to talk about, and which you touched on briefly, is that of the ramp-up, since our products are finding a great deal of success, our current products are finding a great deal of success on global markets, that we have taken many orders, and so the challenge is to scale up to be able to deliver these aircraft as quickly as possible and ideally within the deadlines we have committed to with our partners. Now all this seems like very positive things. You have to understand that the ramp-up is in itself a challenge, because an aircraft has about 3 million parts that we source from suppliers, European or non-European, very largely European but also non-European. An aircraft is competitive because of the suppliers who serve it. About 70 to 80% of what we deliver in an aircraft comes from our suppliers. And so our business is also a business of supply chain management, as we say in-house, and therefore of the supplier chain. When you have 3 million parts on an aircraft in an environment like the one we are in at the moment, which is extremely turbulent industrially, technically, geopolitically, in terms of logistics around the world with areas that are very difficult to navigate, with very rapid changes, a great deal of uncertainty and difficulties in fuel supply, logistics chains are suffering enormously, a number of players are suffering, and so we don't deliver an almost finished aircraft, we deliver a completely finished aircraft. So carrying out this business in the environment we are in at the moment is particularly difficult. One of our vulnerabilities is indeed the ability to keep these supply chains running at the global level to serve an industrial base that is very largely in Europe and in France. You cited some figures. Indeed, a very large majority of our employees are in France. We produce in Europe and therefore in France, we are about one-third in France, one-third in Germany, one-third in the rest of the world, a large part of which is in Europe, and we produce essentially in Europe with a France-Germany split, mainly Spain, Great Britain, and then other European countries to a lesser extent. So we are a very large exporter and you recalled the contribution of aviation, of which Airbus represents the large majority, of €32 billion in positive contribution to the trade balance in 2025, I believe, and by far the largest contributor to the trade balance. Indeed, we are typically an exporting company that designs and produces in Europe, very largely in France, and which can therefore carry out its business by exporting its products to the rest of the world. You all know that we have a trade balance in France that is very negative. So having sectors that are positive is absolutely vital. There has been a great deal of very recent debate and discussion about the situation of the automobile industry in France. I think, and I spent a number of years there, it is an industry I know a little, I spent a number of years there, also spending a lot of time in China at the time. If we look at the automobile industry, and it is good to look at what has happened in the automobile industry over the last 20 years so that we don't make the same mistakes and find ourselves in the same situation in 20 years in aviation, which is today a strong point. If I take three very simple figures: the number of cars produced in France, the direct jobs in the automobile industry, and the contribution to the French trade balance of the automobile industry. In 2004, it was 3.7 million vehicles produced in France. In 2024, it is 1.4 million vehicles, minus 60%. Jobs: it was 750,000 jobs in 2004. It is about, I believe, 400,000 jobs in 2024, almost halved. And the contribution to the trade balance of the automobile industry in France in 2004 was plus €14 billion in positive contribution. In 2024, it is minus €14 billion in negative contribution. So it's not because an industrial sector is strong at a given moment that you should believe it's forever. And I say this because today I see a lot of complacency around the situation of aeronautics and Airbus in particular. You have to keep in mind that if we apply the same recipes to aeronautics as we applied to the automobile industry, the same thing will happen. So there are a number of lessons to be learned, and I don't always feel that these lessons are being taken seriously. Now, we have our ramp-up to do. The ramp-up requires a lot of industrial investment, and we've done a lot of it in France and we're planning more in France. I can tell you that today, investing industrially in France is an obstacle course. If we want to make sure that companies stop investing in France, we continue to keep the obstacle course. Where I, when I go to other countries, I see countries that tell us, "Mr. Faury, what can we do for you?" And they're sincere. So we're not forever in the position of strength we're in today. The second point I'd like to emphasize with you is that on February 22, 2027, we'll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first flight of the A320. Why is that important? Because today, 75% of the aircraft Airbus delivers and a very large part of the prosperity generated by Airbus and its supplier chain in Europe and in France is the A320. We have to replace this aircraft. We have very large investments in innovation, in research, in technology, then in product, in industrial tooling. We'll have industrial capacities to invest in a truly considerable proportion in the decade to come. A large part of Airbus's work in this decade is to put itself in the best possible conditions to succeed in this transition to the aircraft of the future. The aircraft that will succeed the A320, which will be a decarbonized aircraft, an aircraft that must be very competitive, an aircraft that will have new technologies in a number of areas, particularly in connectivity, propulsion, wings, and subjects like that. We absolutely need a favorable environment to make these technology investments, and tomorrow to industrialize them and then to launch this aircraft. If we don't renew the favorable investment conditions for investments that are several tens of billions of euros for Airbus and as much for its supplier chain, if there aren't the conditions to make these investments successfully, these investments won't happen or they'll happen elsewhere. And today, in what I see in Europe and particularly in France, we have labor costs, energy costs, and regulatory barrier costs that are extremely problematic for looking at the future comfortably. So we have a lot of work to do to reconsider the economic environment in which we need to be to succeed in very large reinvestments. We're not just doing it on the A320, we're doing a few along the way. What we're doing right now on long-haul, on helicopters, our industrial investments in Marignane to renew the industrial environment, in Toulouse too with Saint-Éloi-du-Futur, or what we can do in our other sites in Saint-Nazaire and Nantes are important investments, but it has nothing to do with the scale of what we're going to do to renew the fleet of short- and medium-haul aircraft in the succession of the A320. We're in a European regulatory environment. I spend a good part of my time in Brussels too to try to explain why it's important to find a good balance on regulation between what we want to do for good reasons in Europe and what we see around us. We're in a global competitive environment and it's absolutely essential to understand why China is moving so fast in industry, why the United States is moving so fast in digital. If we don't adapt to the speed at which others are going, well, we're simply going to continue to lose ground. And today, if we don't frankly look at a large number of parameters in the way we make public policies in Europe and in France, we're going to continue to see the trend of decline that we've observed in certain industries and particularly in the automobile, as I just recalled to give an example. What I'm saying is not new. It's very, very well described in a number of reports, including the Draghi report, but we haven't put in place the measures to reverse the trend. So I'm part of the industrialists who say, and it's not pleasant to say it, that if we continue like this, we'll continue in the same direction. If we don't significantly change the way we relate to industry, the way we relate to investment, the way we relate to innovation, the way we relate to competitiveness, compared to our major global competitors, we'll lose ground. We at Airbus are able today to succeed in the next step, to succeed in the one that's underway, and to succeed in the one after. But public policies absolutely must create the conditions so that we can implement everything we have in mind for tomorrow and so that we can succeed in the next decades ahead of us. So there's a very big issue of industrial ramp-up, which is very complicated right now and which many public policies are making difficult. Fabien wrote a very, very good paper on a number of very specific points showing that where we make an industrial investment in 2 years, in the United States, it takes 5 years to do it in France. And it's not theory, we have very specific examples. We have concrete proposals that we've put in a paper to be able to change these things. If we're that slow, well, it's a huge brake on investment. And when you have things that need to go fast but you can't find the conditions to exercise that speed, well, it goes elsewhere. And it's not bad will. On the contrary, we do everything we can to invest here. We like being in France, but the conditions have to be viable. Maybe the other point I'd like to emphasize is that I'm here in Paris, I'm in front of the Economic Affairs Committee by virtue of our presence in France. There's no Airbus if there's no European dimension. We're the Europe team playing together because the level of intervention we're at is really in terms of scale, in terms of the scale of investment, innovation, money we put in place, ecosystems we have to mobilize to be competitive. It's at least Europe, and in fact it's increasingly the world, but it's at least Europe. And so Airbus works because it's European in all our major businesses. Our main strategic competitors are American, Chinese, and maybe tomorrow Indian. Our business is commercial aviation. We created this European scale. We absolutely must preserve it. We must be aware, it's part of the reasons why we're successful. We mustn't let it disappear believing it's a minor parameter of success. We have this European scale in helicopters. We created it in missiles about twenty years ago by creating MBDA with other companies. We're partners of Leonardo and the British BAE Systems. We created ArianeGroup in a logic of vertical integration of the rocket and its engine with our partners at Safran. We're also, for example, in regional transport aircraft with Leonardo in a joint venture at 50-50. When we create the conditions for cooperation at the European scale, we have no reason, if we go about it right, not to be as good as the others. But when we play at a much smaller scale, well, we play in the second or third division and we don't have the means to have a team that can win at the global level. So this Franco-German cooperation and with other European countries. Obviously Spain is very important in our ecosystem. The alliance that was formed at the beginning of Airbus, so commercial aviation with Great Britain, is absolutely essential to Airbus's success. Our wings are made there. All the engines on our wide-body aircraft are Rolls-Royce engines. And so I insist here on the fact that it's very important to have national policies that support, I would say, success, but it must be done in good coordination with our European partners. That's the sine qua non condition for tomorrow's success and the day after tomorrow's success. I would have a lot to say to you about the conditions for success and achievement in the military and space domains. It's not exactly the subject of this committee. Maybe I'll say a few words about space anyway and then I'll move on more concretely to your specific questions. On space, we're trying... Ah yes, good. And so on space, we're trying to build the conditions for success at the European scale. That's the Bromo project you've heard about. I'll answer if you wish. So my remarks are aimed at telling you that we're today a world leader in general in aviation and in aeronautics. We're leaders in a number of our businesses, not in all of them. It's a competition that's tough, that's very difficult. We use the word commercial war. It's not an innocent word, it's indeed the context in which we find ourselves today of hyper-competition and hyper-competition in very many businesses, particularly industrial businesses and digital businesses with sovereignty issues that are considerable, and I'd be happy to answer the question. What is sovereignty? You'll have to bear with me because I have views on the subject on the fact that today the European and French environment, and we have a lot of over-transposition in France of European regulations, is unfavorable to us. It is much more difficult to operate in that environment in Europe than it is among the major competitors I mentioned earlier, and so we absolutely need public policies that take into account the demands of global competition to give companies, including those that are doing well today, the conditions for them to do well tomorrow. I'll stop there.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And you'll have the opportunity through the questions of colleagues in the room to come back to the first question I asked you because a number of them are likely to overlap. Exceptionally, my dear colleagues, I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Faury because there's a meeting of the Bureau of the Assembly that has been exceptionally convened by the Chair. So since he's a member of the Bureau, I'm going to exceptionally give him the floor first, and so for the Liberty and Independence group, your mayor and territory. Mr. Topiac, you have the floor.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would like to raise two subjects. First, that of sovereignty with an order book representing more than 9,000 aircraft that will have to be manufactured in the coming years. Obviously, the issue of sovereignty, of securing the supply chain, arises. I was on a visit on July 2 with Avenir Transport to Toulouse to visit your plants, and Didier Cier, your director of industrial affairs, clearly raised the issue of securing and supporting the subcontractors of the aero industry. The Banque de France had identified in 2024 companies among your suppliers that represented fragilities with high debt ratios and insufficient self-financing capacity in a context where we have to ramp up, in cadence, to meet this order book. And then obviously behind, underlying, a point of vigilance on buyout or acquisition operations that could mean that some flagships in our industry, including small ones that have very precise know-how in part of the design or production of the aircraft, could escape a European flag and thus pose sovereignty problems for us. I want to know if your point of vigilance is still the same and if you have launched very concrete actions to be able to secure these companies, including by taking stakes in some of them. On the industrial site, you mentioned obviously ramping up in cadence, that also means building industrial sites. Do you have any feedback on turnkey industrial sites that have been implemented since 2019 that allow going faster in setting up an industrial site? You mentioned a burden of 4 to 5 years. Today, with turnkey industrial sites, we have procedures that allow going faster. And I don't know if you have this information, but I submit it to you and I think we should discuss it together. On the subject of energy transitions and decarbonization, I worked in aero and I worked on the A3X and the A380. It was a period where we were indeed envisaging mass transport and quad-jets. We've changed since. We now have the A320, the A321 XLR, where we can now do long-haul with a single-aisle aircraft. So we can see that the decarbonization issues and kerosene prices have impacted the design of aircraft and the vision of air traffic. I want to draw your attention to the risk of technological rupture in the industrial organization that is evolving, notably on the side of our Chinese friends. A five-year plan has been put in place for 2026-2030. China is going all out on aeronautics after having done so on automobiles and having implemented technological ruptures in the industrial organization, firstly by recentralizing what had been subcontracted internally, and then by changing technology, notably on aircraft like the C929. Are you not afraid that China will gain a technological and industrial organization advantage? Are you prepared to evolve in light of this new context? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Topiac. Mr. Chairman, well, you're going to make my task difficult by asking me to be brief. Securing the supply chain has been, particularly since Covid, an obsession for the industry through the GIFAS and for Airbus in particular, and I think with the public authorities too. There was indeed a very large collective mobilization because we entered Covid in a phase that could have been existential, which was existential for the industry. We came back, you mentioned the Banque de France study, we came back to roughly the level of difficulties of companies that we had just before Covid. We managed to digest the phase that was very, very critical from 2020 to 2023-2024. So we've returned to a permanent animation of the supply chain so that we can have companies functioning normally. And yes, we do securing permanently. If you saw Didier Katzmann, you saw one of the players in this activity at Airbus, and yes, we take stakes in companies either through the funds we set up during Covid and the exit from Covid to ensure survival with fund number one, to ensure the ramp-up with fund number two, or directly in capital as Airbus. The most important example is that of Aubert & Duval, where we took a stake with Safran, and we are developing a special metals and titanium value chain for Europe in order to have a European supply chain and thus be able to source reasonably here. So it's just an example, but it's probably the most emblematic one. The turnkey procedure, I don't know it. What I can tell you is that on new industrial investments or even on reinvestment in existing industrial sites, which was our case for example for the plant we call Jean-Luc Lagardère in Toulouse, where we replaced the A380 with two brand new A321 assembly lines, it was the cross and the banner because we are imposed, for reinvestment in existing sites, a very large number of regulations that apply to new sites. And that's not necessarily European. In many cases, it's an additional layer put in place by France, which is very critical because if we can't go faster at home than elsewhere, in the end, we're not going to stay at home, we're going to look elsewhere. So it's not at all appropriate, in my view, for public policies to put so many obstacles in the wheels. And on decarbonization and on China, decarbonization is a major issue. On aircraft, there's alignment between the economic objective and the ecological objective. The less we consume, the more performant we are. So that creates a virtuous circle for us. I think on aircraft it works very well. On fuels, it's much more complicated. If I had more time, I'd spend more on it. On China, yes, it's an absolutely major issue. If I took so long in my opening remarks to talk about the automobile, it's because it's indeed a sector where the fact that the automobile is a strategic sector in China led to massive investments from a country that is very large, very powerful, that works very fast, with people who are very determined, and I know them well and I respect them a lot. They are now very mobilized on aviation. We need to be very performant and to move very fast.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We will resume the usual order of speakers from the groups. For the Rassemblement National, Mr. Frédéric Webert, you have the floor, Mr. Deputy.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, my dear colleagues, Airbus is not a company like any other. It is a decisive player in our industrial, technological, military and economic sovereignty. In France, Airbus represents 56,000 employees, 4,350 subcontractor companies, and nearly €18.8 billion in purchases from our industrial fabric. Behind the name Airbus are jobs, know-how, territories, SMEs, and French strategic capabilities that are at stake. That is why we cannot consider with indifference the evolution of its governance, its decision-making centers, and its industrial distribution. The problem today is not denying the possibility or even the interest of European cooperation when it genuinely serves France's interests. The problem is continuing to show naivety as if all European partners naturally pursued the same objectives with the same loyalty and in a spirit of balance. Experience demonstrates the opposite. Since the Maastricht Treaty and the way European construction has been organized, France has too often accepted a logic where Germany methodically defends its productive industrial interests while our successive governments take refuge behind the abstract discourse of the Franco-German couple. But this couple is dysfunctional when it comes to preserving sites, jobs, value chains, industrial responsibilities or commercial interests, Berlin knows how to defend its positions with constancy and determination. France, on the other hand, has too often renounced making comparable demands and preferred to bow before the neighbor across the Rhine. It must be recalled that, in fact, the Germans position themselves more as an economic competitor than as a genuine partner today. The SCAF is a particularly enlightening illustration of this. Presented as the great Franco-German cooperation project in the defense field, it was supposed to rest on the systems integration role entrusted to Dassault Aviation. Yet German demands regarding industrial sharing and governance ended up making cooperation within our famous couple impossible. When the project appeared too French in Berlin, Germany did not hesitate to contest its foundations. We draw a simple lesson from this. If the SCAF was judged too French by Germany, then Airbus is beginning today to become too German. This attitude is not based on an assumption. It results from concrete facts. Major management positions are today held by German executives, notably for defense, commercial aircraft, human resources, and finance. At the same time, German ambitions are openly displayed. At the air show, Chancellor Friedrich Merz claimed that the successor to the A320 should be built in Germany under Hamburg's responsibility. This declaration must alert us. France can be neither a financier, nor a luxury subcontractor, nor a secondary partner in a group to which it has contributed so much. France must remain a nation that decides, produces, and innovates. In 2026, a motto is all the more relevant for the homeland, the sciences, and glory. I thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy, Mr. Chairman.
I think you are making an erroneous reading of the reasons why Airbus works. At Airbus, the Germans and the French are not in competition, they are in cooperation. Our competitors are outside. I don't think that in many French companies that appear before you here, there are issues and debates of this nature about the number of Normans, Bretons, Provençals and Alsatians there are in the company to know whether the company will function or not. We are a European company where Europeans work together and it goes well between the French and the Germans. We have moved past this stage that you suggest of economic competition within the company. We have moved past that stage. Please, do not bring us back 20 or 30 years to Franco-German battles that make us much smaller than we can be when we work together. And there is no Franco-German governance problem at Airbus. That does not mean that in other areas, France and Germany are in cooperation. There are many areas of competition. I am not naive at all, sir, I see it, I experience it, and sometimes I suffer from it too, because as I am a European company and in particular Franco-German, we need good cooperation between the two countries. And there are many areas where this cooperation is difficult because there are different strategic issues and each country defends its interests. In my view, far too much compared to the understanding we should have of European interests to defend against the United States or China. And if we are extremely behind today in the field of digital and technologies of AI and so on, it is because we have not understood that it is at the European scale together that we manage to be performant. So do not bring us back where we do not want to be. At Airbus. At Airbus, we work together, we work well. We are in teams where we try to take the best people for the jobs and it changes. Sometimes a job is held by a French person, a German, someone who is neither French nor German. And that is how we are performant. The SCAF, I am not going to rewrite history, I do not have exactly the same reading as you, but I am sorry that we did not manage to carry out this project. That does not mean that there are not many others that work. We have Franco-German projects in the field of aircraft, missiles, helicopters, satellites that work. You also have to see everything that works rather than staying on what does not work. And then on the point regarding the successor to the A320, you have to keep in mind the balances today that work very well at Airbus and it is the preservation of the balances that work that everyone keeps in mind when we make large investments again. I have two brand new A320 to A321 assembly lines in Toulouse but I have four in Hamburg. But I also have two long-haul aircraft lines in Toulouse that I do not have in the rest of the world. So we have a balance today that is not unfavorable to France but which is not unfavorable to Germany either. I really encourage everyone to ask themselves the questions of how we must continue to work together to be as performant tomorrow as we are today. Because if we fight each other internally, I can tell you one thing, we will distract ourselves from paying attention to others. The Chinese who are arriving at great speed, the Americans who are very powerful and who really work as Team America as we have seen in recent years. It is difficult to compete with Boeing at a time when we have US leadership that is also aligned behind these large companies. We need the same thing in Europe and I am counting on you to help us.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the Ensemble pour la République group, Ms. Danielle Brûbois, you have the floor, Ms. Deputy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your presence and for giving us your time, because Airbus is a French and European pride. We tell you again, proof that European industrial cooperation can stand up to the greatest powers in the world. This success also plays out in our territories. Let's go to the Jura. SKF is a strategic link in your chain. It supplies Airbus with bearings, connecting rods, and high-precision parts. Around this site, many subcontracting SMEs are also essential players. They held on during Covid, we supported them. They live to the rhythm of your rates and your ramp-up. SKF, for example, announced €27 million in investments, but with fluctuating volumes and schedule gaps, what commitments does Airbus make to its subcontractors regarding payment, readability, and sharing of inventory costs? Second question, sovereignty. The engine shortage and Pratt & Whitney show our dependence on critical links. The Industrial Accelerator Act enshrines European preference in Union law, but it does not cover aeronautics. How can Europe strengthen its own capabilities, starting with engines? And what do you expect from the public sector? Third question, the future after the abandonment of the SCAF. Airbus launched in Germany an alliance for a fighter aircraft...
of the 6th generation and partners with MTU rather than Safran on hydrogen. Given that the LEAP is manufactured in France, even in the Jura, what role will France and its subcontractors have in your future programmes? Finally, on firefighting. This summer in Lacanau, an A400M equipped with your kit achieved a world first and remarkable feats in firefighting. But only one prototype exists. What timetable do you envisage for series production, and what commitment from the State do you need? Thank you. Thank you, Madam Member.
Mr. Chairman, is it okay? Go ahead. I know SKF a little from having worked with them in some of my previous jobs in the company. I don't know the specific situation of payment and stock management with them. What I can tell you is a bit of what I said earlier: managing our supply chain is absolutely essential at Airbus.
We are obsessed with the idea that our suppliers are in good health. Now, in good health means they have what they need to function well, but also that they are competitive. So we are in a permanent relationship of helping them but also challenging them — that's a poor word in French — so that they are permanently as good as possible. If I have one message to convey on this subject, it is that the performance of our French supply chain over the next two or three decades will depend on their ability to supply, to ramp up safely today in an environment where cybersecurity is very important, where logistics flows are important, where a company's balance sheet is important, its cost competitiveness, but also and perhaps even more its capacity to innovate and invest in tomorrow's technologies. We are organised in France in an exceptionally effective way around the CORAC, which is a tool that has in fact served as an example to others and which absolutely must function. You have a role in supporting the funding of the CORAC. It is an absolutely essential tool for the sector in France, for the big players, but also perhaps especially for the small ones who know and who are organised around us to prepare the technologies that will allow them to be competitive in the major tenders for tomorrow's aircraft. Supporting the CORAC is an essential element that doesn't cost that much and prepares a great deal of competitiveness and efficiency in the decades to come for our suppliers.
Regarding engines, yes, we have few players, not enough European players in the engine field compared to what we need, and we depend heavily on our American partners. One very important partner is CFM, which is a joint venture between the American GE and the French Safran, and which has extended its agreement, I believe, until 2050 from memory, which is a very positive element for us. It is an element of stability, of visibility that allows us to count on them, and it is a bridge between the United States and Europe, and France in particular, which is a stabilising element in commercial uncertainties, in the commercial wars that may exist between Europe and the United States. And we are a major CFM customer since more than half of our A320s, which represent even 75% of the aircraft we deliver, are equipped with CFM engines.
On firefighting, we were able to be in the situation you mentioned with the A400M last summer because we had invested for several years in a self-funded kit to equip the A400M for firefighting with a 20,000-litre capacity. It worked very well. Now, what we need from the French State, and potentially the Spanish, Italian or others, is orders. Ordering kits so that tomorrow it can operate and we have the ability to use a military aircraft fleet that we have today when it is needed, where it is needed, very effectively for firefighting. It won't replace other civil security resources, but as a complement it is extremely effective, and we are delighted that it could be demonstrated last summer.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the La France Insoumise group, Mr. François Picmal, you have the floor, Mr. Member.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman Faury, this summer France was burning. The fires reminded us of the choices of governments, including that of Mr. Attal, who in 2024 cut the civil security budget by €52.8 million. As a result, one of the proposals to make up for the shortfall in resources for rescue workers, notably by my colleague whom you know, Adrien Clouet-Plagnol, was the use of A400M military aircraft with their retardant spray kit. Several were deployed in the emergency. Can you give us an assessment of this use, of its effectiveness against the fires we experienced? I also take this opportunity to question you on the adaptation of A400Ms for this use, which, with climate change, will unfortunately become more and more frequent. Where do you stand on this issue? How can the A400M be a lead in supporting our Canadair fleet, whose average age is around thirty years? Mr. Chairman, the second subject I wanted to discuss with you, Mr. Chairman Faury, is the Bromo project, and we would like to understand the direction taken by Airbus management on this. For the record, to colleagues and to the many people watching us at 7 a.m. in the commission, Bromo is the envisaged merger of part of Airbus's, Thales's and Leonardo's space activities. On the face of it, the idea is interesting. It brings everyone together to work together. It is cooperation, as you mentioned. However, on closer inspection, the project is quite far from cooperation. Indeed, Bromo actually provides for playing solely on competition at the European level. This risks destroying jobs without addressing any concrete industrial issue, while eroding the State's ability to steer decisions in aeronautics. That is why, at this stage, we are unfavourable to the Bromo project. At this point, we still do not know on what date Airbus management plans to submit the file to the European Commission — first April, then postponed month after month for some time now. We are talking about negotiations with the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition, according to the New York Times, with even asset divestments being considered by Airbus to obtain the Commission's approval. Do you confirm or, on the contrary, deny these assertions from the New York Times? That is one question. Can you tell us whether this information is accurate, and if the Bromo project goes ahead, is it planned, for example, that a representative of the French State would sit on the decision-making bodies with real rights to information, intervention and, where applicable, a veto if our country's interests are ignored? I thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Picmal. Mr. Chairman.
Regarding the use of the A400M for firefighting. As I mentioned earlier, we were able to quickly carry out an evaluation with the Air Force and the civil security of the aircraft's capacity, and also to intervene concretely on the fires that occurred in Aquitaine.
The assessment, as far as I can tell, is considered very positive by the State, which, through the Air Force and civil security, handled it. As an indication, intentions have been expressed to us to order additional kits, and the use of the A400M is seen as a serious avenue to strengthen the equipment for the years to come. I would prefer that it be the users themselves who answer this question. We are their supplier, but we are very motivated to give them what they need. And indeed, the A400M has shown — we suspected it because we had made the investments for the firefighting kit — that it was a very important capability. It doesn't replace all the others, but it comes as a complement, and given its capacity and the ability to mobilise it quickly, it is really a tool that, in my opinion, we must make much, much more use of.
On the Bromo project, the objective of this project is to give a European dimension to our capabilities in the field of satellite design, manufacturing and satellite services, which are today spread across several companies in Europe and which lack the scale effect, the size, and therefore the investment capacity and speed to compete as well as possible with our major competitors, particularly American but also Chinese, who are accelerating very strongly. There are conditions to be met to carry out a project like this. First, that the companies find their interest in it — it is not at all a project that will lead to job destruction. It is a project that will protect jobs, or rather that will allow us to continue to invest, to grow in a sector that invests a lot. So it really has a very positive and constructive dimension. It will allow us to develop more technologies, to go faster, to go into constellations, into military, observation, navigation. There are many areas of space that are very important.
We must meet the challenges of the national interest protection provisions in France, which have other names in Germany, Italy, Spain or Great Britain, the main countries concerned. And it is true that each country, at a time when space is important and when the military dimension in space is growing, has a desire for control. Now, if we end up in a system where each one comes and imposes its requirements, we will not get through it. So we need to find a balance that is satisfactory for us as a company, but also satisfactory for our major clients and prime contractors. So that is what we are doing. And regarding the Commission, well, we must comply with a regulation. There is a lot of intention in Europe to evolve this regulation to allow the emergence of champions at European scale, which is not necessarily the mindset in which the regulation was written. It was written to maximise competition in Europe, not the competitiveness of Europe. So we are in this difficulty today of a European Commission that, I believe, has well understood the issues, but is also doing the job for which it is paid, so to speak, in terms of competition. And so yes, they are watching us, they are asking us for an enormous number of files, of information to potentially ask us for a certain number of remedies that we have to negotiate so that the format of the company we will be once we have completed this merger is a format that suits us. We are currently in this phase of discussion, and they themselves are in a phase of discussion with other interveners, other stakeholders, other third parties — I'm sorry, I don't have the word in French in Europe — to gather the information they need. So we still have a certain number of conditions to meet.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the Socialist Party and affiliated group, Ms. Marie-Noëlle Baptistelle, you have the floor, Madam Vice-President.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman Faury, we are delighted to hear you this morning in our Economic Affairs Committee as representative of the Airbus group, which is a true flagship of our economy, with commercial activities and products, of course, around aeronautics, but also in the defence sector and in highly strategic areas in the current geopolitical context and at a time when the war in Europe requires consolidating solid alliances with our partners.
There are many current issues. I will focus on three points. First, on the question of your main activity, which remains aeronautics, and the competition you face, both existing and emerging. I am thinking in particular of China, which aims to develop its own civil and military aircraft through national manufacturers like COMAC. We want here to re-industrialise the country and protect existing industry when national and European champions exist, which is the case. All the more so because through your group's activity, you irrigate a network of companies across the entire territory, a vast ecosystem with more than 3,500 subcontracting companies in France. So, how do you assess today's competitive threat? How do you perceive it internally, and what protection do you expect at the European and French level? Next, on the question of defence, and in particular on a recent news item reported by the press yesterday: Berlin could order 500 Valkyrie drones. Can you come back to the genesis of this product, its development and its usefulness in the current period? This drone was clearly designed as part of a close partnership with the American Kratos. Will this new equipment nevertheless be able to be used in complete independence without risk of remote control, as is the case for a number of weapons sold by the United States? Finally, what are the market prospects for Airbus beyond Germany? Do you sense an interest from the Eastern countries, who are today particularly exposed in the face of Russian aggression and Ukrainian resistance? Finally, regarding your activity, I return to the previous question on space in France. This summer, the announcement of a possible sale of your group's space activities to the United States caused great concern. Can you, before the national representation here, clarify the state of your strategic thinking on this subject? What are your objectives in terms of satellite production for the coming years? Do you think you can seriously compete with SpaceX and develop, for France and the European Union, a cutting-edge sovereign offer in the near future? And finally, to conclude, what are your major future projects for the heart of your new campus in Toulouse? I thank you.
Thank you, Madam Member. Mr. Chairman.
So perhaps I will start the answer with the China topic. Today in commercial aviation, which is the topic you mainly addressed at the beginning, there is a major well-known competitor, Boeing. We come from an era, several decades ago, where there were several American competitors, McDonnell, Douglas and others in particular. So it consolidated around Boeing and Airbus in Europe. China is investing very significantly and in a very organised way for its commercial aviation. The main identified competitor is COMAC, which has made an aircraft to compete with the A320 on the market. That is what they have done. This aircraft is being delivered in China in several dozen units. They are ramping up. They are making extensive use of a Western supplier chain. So this is a topic on which I would have things to say in terms of protection. But they are today in the process of verticalising, that is to say developing their own complete equipment in order to be quite sovereign in this sector and therefore to compete with us much more broadly in several decades.
That is the reason why I made my opening remarks around the importance of successfully investing in the successor to the A320 in order to be in 10, 15 or 20 years on a generation of aircraft after the one on which our Chinese competitors, our Chinese friends, will be at that time. So we must continue to go very fast, and the main answer is not necessarily an answer of protection on a market which is a global market and where the scale effect is very important. It is an issue of attractiveness of the European ecosystem so that we can make the investments, succeed them and be at the right level of performance. Hence the time I spent here explaining the importance of working on the key competitiveness factors: labour costs, energy costs and especially what I call regulatory barriers. It is the cost of compliance with the entire European regulation that costs us dearly and slows us down, while our Chinese competitors are heavily subsidised. It is a public policy of China to invest in its commercial aviation, and they are going very, very fast. The speed at which the Chinese are going in industry should teach us lessons every day. And this is something I do not see enough in Europe in what I call public policies, that is to say the consequences of the regulations that are put in place and which make our lives very difficult in order to be able to go at the same speed.
Regarding drones, we actually have a drone policy. The Valkyrie is one of the elements we are developing. Regarding the system on board the Valkyrie, we will use an American platform to go fast on system development, but it is an Airbus system. So we will not be in a situation of dependence on data or connectivity since the system will be ours. But more broadly, we have a drone policy that is very largely in-house. So we develop, design and manufacture all our drones, whether they are observation drones, military drones, or what we are investing heavily in at the moment, which is counter-drone drones, a sector that is particularly interesting technically and technologically, but above all essential for sovereignty. That is protection against the proliferation of drones that we see around us. I will stop there. Perhaps a few words on constellations. Yes. Well, first of all, regarding the OneWeb constellation, we repatriated the assembly line that was in the United States to Toulouse, and we produce the OneWeb satellites for Eutelsat in Toulouse. We delivered the first ones, I believe the first 32 or something like that have been delivered. So we have vertically integrated and historically localised in France, in this case in Europe, our production chain.
And with Bromo, we have the ambition to come together as several players in order to go much faster on sovereign constellations, which is really the topic of the moment and for which SpaceX has gone very, very fast. Starlink is indeed the world leader today. We do not necessarily have the ambition to do the same thing as what they are doing, but there are other things to do that we can do just as well or better. And that is why we are organising ourselves as several players in order to go at the right speed and with the right levels of investment.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the Les RĂ©publicains group, Mr. Vincent Roland, you have the floor, Mr. Member.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman Executive, for the elements you have given us. I would like to say in the preamble that Les RĂ©publicains is absolutely proud to have in our country a company like Airbus, which is a world leader in civil aviation. I also noted that you have a wide network of subcontractors, that you wish to create a titanium supply chain. I take the liberty, if you allow me, to recommend to you companies in my constituency in Ugine that manufacture titanium. Your commercial successes are numerous and all the better. There is, however, a small shadow over this idyllic picture, which is your ability to deliver aircraft and to meet production deadlines. Could this not, in the long run, actually hinder your commercial successes in the event of delivery difficulties? That will be my first question. And how could the State, at one level or another, help you in this regard? The A320, you mentioned it, is an enormous commercial success. 75% of production. There are six assembly lines in Europe, four elsewhere, in the United States, in China. Can you tell us what the production split is in terms of units for this family of aircraft? And even if the question has already been more or less raised, which do you fear most, COMAC or Boeing in Seattle? How do you explain that, despite the setbacks of the Boeing 737, the company was able to recover so quickly? Should we see a helping hand or a boost from the American State? What about the future of the Airbus A320, or rather its replacement? We have well understood that the constraints of all kinds weighing on France and in Europe were a handicap. For our part, we are obviously in favour of a simplification shock, also of tax stability, which is absolutely indispensable, and of having a supportive State. Finally, I will conclude regarding the A380, which was popular with airline clients but whose production unfortunately stopped. What are the reasons, given that today we have saturated airports and that perhaps at one time or another these large-capacity aircraft could have represented a solution to airport saturation? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I recognise you well there, during parliamentary work, the sale continues in the shop, visibly in the aisles, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, thank you for your questions. So indeed, more than 9,000 aircraft in the order book is a very great opportunity, but it is also a very great obligation because you can imagine that there are commitments made by Airbus to deliver these aircraft under certain conditions, by given dates, to our clients. At a time when they need to renew their fleets, to put into service aircraft that consume less. The price of fuel at the moment is a reminder for them of the absolute urgency to switch to more economical and less fuel-guzzling aircraft. How can the State help us? It is a bit the point of what I tried to say in the introduction, which is by creating the conditions for the functioning of industrial chains and therefore in the trade war relations with one another, having a strong Europe that can negotiate its positions. We don't just have failures, we also have successes. We had the implementation by the United States of a tariff policy about a year, a year and a half ago, and we were able to organise ourselves in Europe with the support of the European Commission to have a negotiation that allowed us to return to zero tariffs, that is to say the agreement that had been signed in 1979 between the major aeronautics countries. So we had the capacity in Europe to make our arguments count and to obtain something that was satisfactory.
What seems important to me today is that at a time when we are projecting ourselves onto the next generation of aircraft, well, we won the match of the previous decades in only one way, and if we don't do anything silly, we will manage to deliver these aircraft, we will be able to reap the fruits of all the investments that have been made in terms of prosperity. But the next generation, we are replaying the match. So we need an environment that is favourable in terms of labour in all these dimensions, in economic and fiscal terms. And I am very worried today about the situation in France in particular, but not only, because given the difficulties in getting the State budget to work, there are more and more measures that are actually obstacles or handicaps to investment or return on investment. It is extremely worrying for people like us who invest over very, very long periods. We need visibility, security on these investments. When we make investments of this size, we are going to put a lot of money on the table in the hope that we will be able to find the return on investment so that the company can continue to prosper. It doesn't always work. The A380 is an example where we couldn't get the return on the investment we wanted, essentially for reasons of market evolution. In this case, I think it is really a market question. We had the arrival of long-haul twin-engine aircraft which made a long-haul quad-engine aircraft much more difficult to make profitable for airlines. So indeed, this aircraft stopped for lack of clients because other more competitive aircraft arrived, but one of the two most competitive aircraft that arrived is ours, it's the A350, which we wouldn't have had without the A380. So I think it is absolutely essential that this innovation loop can take place. But to make risky investments, the environment must be as favourable as possible. Otherwise, you take your risks where you have more chance of overcoming them, of overcoming the challenges. So it is very important that there is a concerted mobilisation in France and in Europe on creating the conditions for tomorrow's success. And what we see today are regulatory barriers and cost issues that are very problematic and very worrying. We have a few years to change this, and there are really decisions to be taken nationally and at the European level.
I insist again on the CORAC. The CORAC is a tool that we have equipped ourselves with in France, which allows us to organise the sector not only so that it is efficient today, but so that it is high-performing tomorrow. And we are today in the situation we are in with a large aeronautics ecosystem in France because the CORAC and its predecessor have worked well over the years. So I really urge you to continue to support us on this scheme. It is not Airbus that you are supporting, it is the entire sector and almost more the small players who need this innovation aid, who need the coordination of all the players to be on the right technologies tomorrow.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the Democratic group, Mr. Pascal Lecan, you have the floor. Mr. Vice-President.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman Executive, dear colleagues, I would first like to thank you, Mr. Chairman Executive, for your presentation of the current situation and the development prospects of the Airbus group, a group that I know well since almost 30 years, because with the arrival of the first Airbus in Dubrovnik for Croatia Airlines in exchange for the Boeings of the former Yugoslavia, and I had welcomed them at the time on the tarmac of Dubrovnik. Firstly, I can speak about your production conditions, which were mentioned just before. Given this important order book of 9,000 aircraft and the group's desire to maintain such a pace, I would like to raise the question of engines, which seem to constitute a bottleneck. Pratt & Whitney deliveries experienced difficulties at the beginning of 2026. You spoke to us about CFM for the A320s. You are aiming for 870 deliveries by the end of the year, to produce 70 to 75 single-aisle aircraft per month in 2027. Will the supply chain allow it? Do you anticipate any difficulties, and if so, of what nature?
Furthermore, many industrial sectors established in the territories see their development partly inhibited by recruitment difficulties. Is the aeronautics sector, which traditionally enjoys a certain prestige, protected or more protected from this issue? In my territory of the Vienne, the ISAE-ENSMA provides 500 specialised engineers every year. Is that enough? At the same time, I too wanted to come back to the SCAF project, which marked us a lot before you. We had the CEO of Dassault in this same place, and at a time when an acceleration of global tensions is evident, the return of war in Europe, the weakening of multilateralism, we are convinced, with my colleagues of the Democratic group, that European defence and the pooling of resources and know-how is the only possible path. A European path, you insisted earlier on the European dimension of Airbus. In this collective construction, States as well as companies that innovate, that do like your company, Mr. Chairman, have a major role to play. The failure of the SCAF project sends an unfortunate signal about our capacity to work together to better protect our European sovereignty.
In the failure of SCAF, if my information is correct, you represented the German and Spanish parties opposite Dassault, which represented the French side, but perhaps I don't have the right explanation. What lesson do you draw for yourself from the SCAF experience? Apart from the important pillar at your company, the combat cloud with your partners Thales and Indra, what perspective do you see for the European defence industry? What role can Airbus play? Finally, I don't want to say it's a subsidiary question, but in a not-so-distant professional past, before becoming a member of parliament, I met Agnès Pardieu, who at the time was working on the electric passenger aircraft project. Where are you on this project? I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for all your answers.
Thank you, Mr. Member. Mr. Chairman.
So the ramp-up, the success of the ramp-up depends indeed almost entirely on our supply chain, enormously in any case, and on our own capacity to equip ourselves industrially. Airbus has made the industrial investments. They are now in place to move to around 870 aircraft this year, to more than 1,000 in the years to come, and in particular to 75 aircraft per month for the A320 family. We are targeting already between 70 to 75 per month by the end of 2027. So we are on this trajectory.
We have a huge number of suppliers, several thousand. And their situation evolves over time. We have a very significant improvement in the health situation of all our suppliers between the low point of 2021-2022 and today. Our most visible difficulties are concentrated on engines, in particular, essentially those of Pratt & Whitney, which had two major quality problems, technical and industrial, to manage, which had very heavy consequences for the retrofit of the in-service engine fleet, and which creates very problematic competition between engines for new aircraft and engines for in-service aircraft. So we are still in this difficulty and we are suffering a lot. We had to revise downwards at the end of last year, beginning of this year, the number of aircraft we wanted to deliver this year given this problem. We also have difficulties in other areas, particularly aerostructures, so fuselages, also cabin equipment. We had to invest to buy a number of Spirit activities in the United States and in Europe to take back control ourselves of these activities which are on the critical path of our ramp-up. But overall, we are today, as I speak to you, in a situation that seems to us reasonably positive relative to our objectives, and we continue to keep the same objectives which seem to us quite appropriate and credible.
Training and the availability of skills on the market is a permanent issue for the sector. It was very problematic coming out of Covid, and the sector organised a lot to go and do communication, advertising for our trades. We used the 2023 Paris Air Show very effectively and it worked very well. And today, I hear from my teams and those of our suppliers that this issue is still present but much less critical than it has been. We have returned to a situation where we more or less manage to find the teams we need in quantity, and in certain trades we have major difficulties and we organise ourselves specifically. For example, we set up a cybersecurity training school at Toulouse at Airbus to train ourselves the people we need because we cannot find the skills we need on the market. But it remains, I would say, reasonably satisfactory. It still needs to be monitored very closely in the years to come, where the level of training and skills we need is becoming increasingly broad, and also particularly in digital trades.
What lessons from the SCAF failure? I think there are many, about the community of needs, about the fact that these are programmes that last a long time and when a lot happens at the geopolitical level and in the environment we are in, which also impacts one partner country or another, it is difficult to maintain alignment during the project construction phase. But I would say, in my opinion, that alignment is needed at two levels: at government level and at industry level. And in some projects, it is at government level that we have difficulties, and in other projects, it is at industry level. I think that on SCAF, it is indeed industrial cooperation that failed to function, where I think we should have, we could have, we should have made it work, but we did not manage to do so factually, and so there came a time when we had to move on to something else, unfortunately. We must not consider that because SCAF, the SCAF aircraft, the NGF, did not work, it means that cooperation in the defence field does not work. There are many that work, but we must look each time at why it works, why it doesn't work, how we do better the next time.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the Horizon and Independents group, Mr. Thomas Lam.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman Faury, dear colleagues, I would like to ask you about what happens around and after the sale of an aircraft. We have talked a lot about Airbus orders, rates, assembly sites, the supply chain. But an aircraft sold also means, for decades, maintenance, training, modernisation and increasingly digital services. Airbus itself quantified this last February. The annual market for aeronautical services in Asia-Pacific could reach $138.7 billion by 2044, all players combined. I know this market is not only yours. Engine manufacturers, equipment suppliers, other airlines and independent service providers operate in it. I also know that part of these services must be carried out close to clients. But another part is exportable: software, for example, engineering, equipment, certain training, and these skills are often those of French SMEs. This question ties in with my work as rapporteur for opinion on foreign trade appropriations, which I will present at 11 a.m. before this committee, and my observation is constant: France has world champions, but too few SMEs that export directly.
You mentioned before the Senate in April 2025, 3,500 French suppliers, including 2,500 SMEs and 1,000 ETIs. Your purchases in France reached €18.8 billion in 2024, which is considerable. But being a supplier for an aircraft sold abroad does not necessarily mean exporting oneself. I do not forget that schemes exist. Team France, the aeronautics and space sector launched in 2025 with Business France and the GIFAS, already coordinates international prospecting. French suppliers contribute to Airbus's export success. Could we perhaps imagine that this success helps them in return to conquer their own market? My question is therefore the following: without exposing ourselves to a risk of loss of technological or industrial sovereignty, how can Airbus help French SMEs in the sector access new markets directly? I thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Member. Mr. Chairman.
So indeed, the share of activity we carry out in support and services is growing strongly. It is a growth opportunity for us. We are a small player today in the world of all service players, and we have what it takes to bring, with digital, solutions that Airbus can provide more effectively than other players can, thanks to the intimate knowledge we have of the product and the aircraft. We are very attached to the fact that our product or service suppliers are solid players. And to be solid players, they also need in many cases to have access to international markets. Within the GIFAS, we do every year, we have a lot of support activities for our suppliers, small, medium and large. And we in particular have actions that are organised around trips to major client countries where we are all together, and we give access to all potential clients or potential partners or potential suppliers of our own suppliers, in order to try to make the Team France of commercial aviation and defence work as well as possible. We have done it in major countries like China, India, the United States, Great Britain in the years that have passed. And we also do it individually, meaning that my teams and I have a certain number of recent cases where we try to match our suppliers with potential partners to allow them to develop and grow in that dimension. But it is true that many of our suppliers succeed first and foremost through the business they do through us, because 3 million parts on an aircraft and one day 1,000 aircraft, this year about 870 aircraft...
per year, that means there is a very large share of the activity that is carried out through the aircraft itself. There you go, that's how it is.
