Airbus chief: we're committed to the UK whether it's in the EU or not

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/bu...-10076965.html

Airbus chief: we're committed to UK whether or not it is in the EU

There has been speculation that the giant European plane manufacturer could reduce its UK presence if Britain votes to leave the European Union. Jamie Dunkley, in Munich, learns that this departure is not destined for take-off

The head of Europe’s largest plane maker, Airbus, has said the company will not pull out of Britain if the result of May’s general election triggers a referendum on the UK’s future in the European Union.

Airbus employs 17,000 people across the UK and has big sites in Bristol and Wales, where it designs and tests planes and makes wings for aircraft used by the likes of BA, Virgin and easyJet.

The chief executive Tom Enders, who is an adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, told The Independent: “We believe that the free movement of people, capital, resource and technology facilitated by the UK’s EU membership has been key to the success of our operations here, of Airbus as a group, and also to the UK economy. We hope the UK will choose to stay in the EU, and continue this mutually beneficial relationship.”

But with a possible referendum on the horizon after the election, he added: “Regardless of which decision the UK will make, we are strongly committed to our operations in the UK, which are key to the long-term future of our group.”

The comments by Mr Enders will be welcomed by Airbus workers, as well as unions and politicians. In a recent Channel 4 spoof documentary, UKIP: The First 100 Days, the company was depicted as pulling out of Britain following the rise to power of Nigel Farage’s anti-European Union party.

Airbus’s roots go back to 1969, when France’s Aerospatiale and Germany’s Daimler-Benz Aerospace joined forces to break the US grip on the global aviation market. It was incorporated as a company in 2000 and now dominates the global market alongside Boeing, with which it has an intense rivalry.

Executives in the company gathered in Munich yesterday to unveil Airbus’s latest annual results, which showed that its order book stood at a record €857.5bn (£625bn). Overall, the group’s profits rose 59 per cent to €2.3bn, with revenues up 5 per cent at €60.7bn and its dividend up 60 per cent to €1.20 a share.

Another lie falling apart at the seams that large corporations will go running if we were to leave the EU. Of course as I have pointed out countless times when it comes to this often repeated lie, they said the same thing that they'd all leave when they were trying to get us to join the Euro currency back in the early 2000s and thank goodness we didn't listen to them. But it is nice of the Airbus chief to stop the fearmongering and tell the truth so well done him.

It's true that big corporations love organisations and structures like the European Union of course, because that way when it comes to implementing regulations that will hurt their competitors/prevent start up companies appearing because of the start costs (aka craeting a monopoly via regulation) it simply only has to lobby one parliament and one unelected Commission rather than having to convince 28 separate parliaments with those pesky national voters who may say no to such law changes.

Thoughts?