Charlemagne: AIRBUS OF EVERYTHING! Europe has an odd fantasy: that every industry can be fixed by creating an "Airbus of". From satellites, batteries, cloud computing and more, the idea of EU champions ready to take on the world is oddly popular. Brace for impact! www.economist.com/europe/2025/... - ThreadSky

spignal.bsky.social • 6 days ago

Charlemagne: AIRBUS OF EVERYTHING!

Europe has an odd fantasy: that every industry can be fixed by creating an "Airbus of". From satellites, batteries, cloud computing and more, the idea of EU champions ready to take on the world is oddly popular.
Brace for impact!

https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/05/29/europe-fantasises-about-an-airbus-of-everything-can-it-fly

Comments

halken.bsky.social•5 days ago

EU campions are not extempt from competition, as say a EU launch provider is facing competion from the outside and have to compete with Space X and Chinese & Indian launch providers. But if we fail to get to the start line, because SpaceX got bns$ in US gov support...
So the premise is false.

halken.bsky.social•5 days ago

And areas like batteries, ICT & launches are too important to rely on China or US for.

mrtpsm.bsky.social•6 days ago

To be fair, the euro sets the expectation for this…

thomasaubreycca.bsky.social•1 day ago

Good piece, but important to note that the success of the Airbus project was due to the Heath government deciding not to provide launch support for the BAC 3-11. https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/whose-industrial-strategy-is-it-anyway/ The collapse of the project paved the way for Airbus to enter the market and replace BAC

thomasaubreycca.bsky.social•1 day ago

as the dominant European provider of commercial aviation. The UK lost revenues of over $400bn and thousands of high value jobs - then we wonder why productivity slowed down....

williamw1.bsky.social•6 days ago

It has a similar fantasy in financial regulation after the success of UCITS funds and tries to replicate it at every opportunity with predictable results (see PEPPs, ELTIFs and soon to be European long-term savings accounts).

grimmse.bsky.social•5 days ago

We need an Airbus Omnimus!

berthubert.bsky.social•6 days ago

Perhaps I seeded this a bit in January 2024: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/taking-the-airbus-to-the-ikea-cloud/ - but this article makes the point that "doing an Airbus" is stupendously hard. And it doesn't just happen -> https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/now-how-to-get-that-european-cloud/

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