Airbus CEO 'not necessarily optimistic' on European defence cooperation

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France, July 3 (Reuters) - Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said on Friday he was "not necessarily optimistic" on defence cooperation in Europe as countries are under pressure and have enough funds to invest.

Faury was speaking at annual economic forum Les Rencontres économiques d'Aix-en-Provence- a few weeks after the collapse of Franco-German-Spanish fighter programme FCAS. Paris and Berlin announced putting an end to the project following months of tension between industrial partners Airbus and Dassault over workshare. "If we miss the window of opportunity in the next few years, we’ll end up with fragmented national solutions for decades to come", Faury said, adding that both Berlin and Paris were very eager to find solutions for defence cooperation. "We keep believing in European cooperation at Airbus", he said.

Earlier this week, Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier told a French senate committee that he was open to cooperation after the breakdown of the Future Combat Air System project. "We are capable of cooperating, we have shown it in the past, but we want to cooperate with rules that are accepted from the start," he added.

(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi in Aix-en-Provence and Florence Loève in Paris, editing by Dominique Vidalon)