United Kingdom and Gibraltar European Union membership referendum
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The aviation and defense group Airbus has again threatened Britain with the closure of factories in the event of an unregulated exit from the EU.
"If there is a Brexit without agreements, we may have to make very damaging decisions for the UK at Airbus," said Airbus CEO Thomas Enders in a video message.
That was not an empty threat. "Those who doubt Airbus could pull off UK business in the event of a no-deal Brexit are wrong." British aviation is now on the brink.
"Long-term business"
It is not possible to move the big British factories immediately to other parts of the world. But aviation is a long-term business, Enders said.
The world's second-largest aircraft group, behind Boeing, employs 14,000 people on the island, 6,000 at the Broughton factory in Wales, where aircraft wings are built, and 3,000 in Filton, western England.
Airbus manufactures wings in the UK for almost all of its passenger and cargo aircraft. Only the new Airbus A220, which the manufacturer has taken over from the Canadian Bombardier Group, is independent of this. In an unregulated Brexit Airbus must fear for its supply chains.
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"Please do not listen to the madness of the Brexites, who claim that because we have huge factories here, we will not move and will always be here." There are in the world countries that would like to build wings for Airbus, said the German-born Enders on. "Brexit threatens to destroy a century of development based on education, research and human capital."
It's a shame that more than two years after the referendum outcome, companies are still unable to properly plan for the future, Enders said. "In a global economy, the UK no longer has the capacity to do it alone - big aerospace projects are multinationals."