Airbus COO Butschek: “German government has no reason to withhold the payment of 600 million euro –of 1.1 billion loan- after Airbus has assigned 4000 jobs to Germany in the A350 XWB program”. It will be one of the first decision after coalition formed.

Airbus COO Günter Butschek said in an interview at Tagesspiegel newspaper that Germany should pay the remaining 600 million euros of a disputed development loan for Airbus's A350 XWB, now Airbus has allocated work to German employees.

The German government had demanded that Airbus guarantee a certain amount of the work on the A350 plane would be done in Germany as a condition for paying out the remaining part of the loan.

Chief Operating Officer Günter Butschek said in the interview at Tagesspiegel that Airbus had now assigned 4.000 of the A350 jobs to Germany, 250% more than targeted, while the German proportion of research&development is far beyond the 1/3 promised.

"We have therefore far exceeded our promises and believe there is now no reason to withhold the remaining payment," Herr Butschek said. "The ball is now in the government's court".

Any payout will have to wait for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives to conclude coalition talks after her party won September's federal election but failed to gain enough votes for a majority.

"The conditions for the payment of the loan to Airbus can only be determined by the future government," a spokeswoman for the federal ministry of economics said. "The ministry does not want to bind the future government to any decisions made on this matter at the present time."



Based on the article “Airbus exec says time for Germany to pay A350 loan in full” published in Reuters