Comment by weinzierl

The work and know-how is mainly spread between Germany, France and Italy. The mechanism that ensures it is called "national return". The order volume per country has to correspond to the countries respective monetary contribution.

I worked on the Ariane from 2000 to 2006."National return" was a pain for all the smaller companies and they usually founded subsidiaries in all the other member states to game the system.

Without Germany and Italy, France can build and fly no Ariane. Not even close.