EADS is pushing European governments for a rapid agreement on the establishment of a joint procurement agency armed with its own budget in an effort to avoid a repeat of the protracted delays that hampered the pre-launch phase of the Airbus Military A400M transport.
The A400M was finally launched in May with orders for 180 aircraft from seven European nations - the largest military aircraft order since Eurofighter - after years of political indecision. Originally, nine nations had planned to buy a total of 212 transports, but Italy and Portugal dropped out.
"The decision-making process in the different nations was too long," says EADS co-chief executive officer Rainer Hertrich. "We have to accelerate the political decision-making process," he adds.
According to Hertrich, a new agency "must develop a model of how we can create European programmes if the time requirements [of customer nations] are not matching".
OCCAR was established in 1993 as a multinational defence procurement agency. It represents the A400M customer nations and is supposed to improve the efficiency of the European industrial and technology base by moving away from strict national workshare rules.
EADS wants the new agency be put in full control of its own budget and take responsibility for co-ordinating European research and development, taking politicians out of the decision making process much earlier in the procurement process.
"OCCAR could be the basis of the organisation but this depends on whether the new agency will get this power," says Hertrich. "Whether OCCAR will absorb the new agency is a matter that is still under discussion," he adds.
Source: Flight International
