EADS in bid to avert Franco-German jobs rift

TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Airbus parent EADS pledged on Thursday to give France and Germany an equal hand in building its next aircraft, the A350, in a bid to defuse a row over the share of jobs in Europe's fragile aerospace industry.

EADS (EAD.PA) Chief Executive Louis Gallois rejected accusations by a local business group that Airbus wanted to shift jobs and investment toward Germany and away from the French aviation capital of Toulouse in the country's southwest.

The issue of French and German equality in Airbus has often been the source of national tensions over industrial policy and threatens to surface again as Airbus embarks on development of a 10 billion euro plane to catch up with rival Boeing, the A350.

"There is no imbalance between France and Germany," Gallois said after meeting Toulouse politicians and business leaders.

"The workload on the development of the A350 will be at least an equitable one and I won't let anyone say that the French have been disadvantaged," Gallois told a news conference.

The head of the Toulouse chamber of commerce, Claude Terrazzoni, wrote to French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde last week saying Airbus was being "plundered" by Germany.

The letter not only caused a local furore but threatened to reopen wounds caused by Franco-German in-fighting. Paris and Berlin hoped to quash these last year by abolishing a system of power-sharing in EADS and naming Frenchman Gallois as sole

CEO.

The job was previously split between Gallois and Tom Enders, who instead stepped down to become only the second German executive to run wholly owned EADS subsidiary Airbus.