France has staged a series of meetings to discuss the Airbus Military Company A400Mtactical transport in an attempt to get a contract signed by the end of the year.
The French government has held meetings with Germany and Italy during which the troubled programme was on the agenda. A contract was scheduled to be inked in Berlin last month, but Germany declined to sign.
The Germans have been dragging their feet by conducting a last-minute effort to reduce the cost of the aircraft by around 8%. It has committed to the programme's largest off-take, 73 aircraft, and is responsible for funding the biggest share of the $16 billion project. Many observers doubt Berlin's intention ever to take the number it is committed to.
The participating countries - Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK - have been planning to conclude a deal by the end of this year, but there are limited occasions when the defence ministers will be together, making a meeting in Brussels on 18December the most likely date for a signing.
Berlin, with the other participants, gave responsibility for negotiating the A400M contract to the pan-European OCCAR arms procurement agency, and is "not in a position to re-negotiate the contract individually", says an industry source.
AMC says it could re-negotiate the deal with OCCAR, but that would delay the programme beyond the end of the year.
French political leaders met with their Italian counterparts last week continuing attempts to persuade Rome to maintain a presence in the programme.
The Italian defence minister, Antonio Martino, has already declared that Italy will not participate, and the previously pro-A400M industry minister, Antonio Marzano, recently said, "the industrial fall-out of the A400M programme is not so relevant for the Italian industry and I think that there are different instruments to play foreign politics with other than buying aircraft."
Without a contract signature before the end of the year, UK participation could also be in jeopardy. It needs A400Ms to be delivered on schedule in 2008 to replace its ageing first-generation Lockheed Martin C-130K Hercules C1/3s. AMC says it can deliver the first A400M 71 months after contract signing.
Source: Flight International
