Election rivals seek Airbus political capital

PARIS, Mar 5 (Reuters) French presidential candidates are vying to show solidarity with Airbus workers facing hefty job losses but offer different views on how much the state should intervene to help the troubled European aircraft maker.

The opposition Socialists' Segolene Royal was the first to beat a path to the doors of Airbus trade unions after the firm announced 10,000 job losses, including 4,300 in France, saying she wanted the firm's Power8 restructuring plan put on ice.

''If I am elected, after a moratorium on Power8, the state will intervene to recapitalise and redefine the management while ensuring that the fabric of small and medium-sized firms, who are suppliers and the big victims of Power8, is maintained,'' she said in Saturday's La Depeche du Midi newspaper.

''The state can and should intervene in Airbus,'' she added, referring to the French state's 15 per cent stake in the plane maker's parent company EADS.

France's power to intervene in Franco-German Airbus is curtailed by a shareholder pact, but the firm's political masters often apply pressure informally and its chairman, Louis Gallois, has dubbed nationalist infighting as ''poison''.

Royal, who has said she will raise Airbus when she meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday, wants French regions hit by Airbus job losses to be able to ''take a stake in Airbus like the German regions''.

German regions are among investors who took a slice of Airbus parent EADS when DaimlerChrysler sought to reduce its stake, although voting rights for the German core shareholding of 22.5 per cent remain entirely with the carmaker.

QUEUE OF VISITORS Airbus unions will next be courted by the ruling UMP's Nicolas Sarkozy and the centrist UDF party's Francois Bayrou, in third place in the election race according to opinion polls, who are heading today to Toulouse, the headquarters of Airbus.

Sarkozy used a television appearance on Friday to reassure voters, who consistently rate unemployment as one of their top concerns, that Airbus job losses would come through attrition and early retirement.

The company has said this would be the case but warned there could be forced layoffs should the firm's fortunes worsen in 12 to 18 months. Airbus has been hit by delays to its A380 superjumbo, with the latest blow coming on Friday when United Parcel Service Inc. said it would cancel an order for A380 freighters.

Sarkozy said on Wednesday the state was not the shareholder required by a firm in need of major investment, such as EADS, but he has since added some nuances, saying on Thursday the French state had the right to intervene as an EADS shareholder.

''The management has undertaken that there will be no redundancies. But what matters for me ... is will the firm, in five, 10 years, have the means to grow ... will it have the capital, the shareholders?'' he told Canal+ late on Friday.

''The German state does not have money, nor does the French state. Daimler does not want to invest and Lagardere does not want to invest. It is worth discussing this.'' Media firm Lagardere has a 7.5 per cent stake in EADS inherited from the aerospace business built up by the current chairman's father. Arnaud Lagardere has refocused the firm on its media activities while remaining EADS co-chairman.

The UDF's Bayrou has sought a middle way, telling Europe 1 yesterday that big aeronautical firms should be able to count on governments to help them through difficult patches.

''It was done by the American government for Boeing, by public orders,'' he told Europe 1 radio, adding that ''this should be done by European governments for Airbus.'' Reuters AKJ DB1021