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Europe should beef up support for industry and put its exporters first after the global financial crisis exposed the "mirages of speculation," the head of Airbus parent EADS said in remarks published on Wednesday.
"I am convinced that Europe must play its industrial card with greater determination.
The financial and economic crisis demonstrates that solid and lasting growth cannot be built upon the mirages of speculation," Chief Executive Louis Gallois wrote in an op-ed column for French newspaper Les Echos.
Gallois, who has repeatedly criticized the strength of the euro against the dollar, reiterated calls for governments and monetary policymakers to pay more attention to exporters.
"Industry and related services are the cornerstone of stable and balanced development. In the face of emerging economies, we have reached a turning point where Europe must decide if it wants to stay in the industrial and technological race or not. "This suggests first that policies — taxes, currency, competition and research — should take account of the need to support European industry, especially companies which export."
Gallois last year described the weakness of the dollar as a "Sword of Damocles" hanging over Europe's largest aerospace group, particularly its civil airliner subsidiary Airbus.
Airbus competes with Boeing [BA
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The deputy head of Toulouse-based Airbus last week called on central banks to do more to ensure currency stability, saying current dollar exchange rates were "very difficult" for all industrial companies with costs in euros.
Ringside View
Gallois' remarks were timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of a Franco-German deal in 1999 which paved the way for the creation of EADS, with Spain also on board, in 2000.
The freshly launched euro stood at $1.08 on the day of the preliminary 1999 deal but has since risen 37 percent against the dollar.
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AP Air France Airbus A330-200 jet in flight |
At $1.48 [EUR=
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] on Wednesday, it is up 18 percent since early February but well off a peak of $1.60 seen in July 2008.
Ten years ago France's then Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed to merge aerospace assets in a deal announced near the Franco-German border, in a bid to demonstrate their nations' special economic relationship.
Yet internal power struggles, both between French and German executives and within the French camp, were blamed for exacerbating a crisis over delays to the Airbus A380 superjumbo which led to a plunge in the value of EADS shares in mid-2006.
With its ringside view of strategic industries, EADS emerged over the years as a barometer of fluctuating industrial ties.
Gallois told Le Figaro in a separate interview on Wednesday that relations between the euro zone's leading powers had been strengthened by joint efforts to tackle the recent financial crisis and that this had created a "positive climate" for EADS.
Franco-German-controlled EADS combines Airbus, the Ariane space rocket, as well as interests in helicopters, missiles, Eurofighter combat planes and France's nuclear deterrent.
Gallois said the time was now ripe to launch bold new industrial projects in Europe and suggested some of the funding could come from a national loan being drawn up by France.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled plans in June to take out a loan from the public or financial markets to fund priority investments for the country's future.
A commission on investments to be financed by the loan will hand in its recommendations early next month.
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