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LEGAL PROBLEMS OVER EXTENSION OF AIRBUS SITE AT HAMBURG

To comply with the Airbus A380 development plan, the Airbus plants involved in final assembly need to start building additional production facilities as soon as possible. Existing capacity is not sufficient to cope with expected increases in production of current Airbus models. In Toulouse, one of the two final assembly locations, everything is proceeding at its normal pace. No one doubts that the A380 final assembly facilities will be completed on time.

By contrast, in Finkenwerder, to the south of Hamburg, all the signs are that a storm is brewing over the partial filling in of an inlet of the Elbe River, which during the 1930s was dug up for the production of seaplanes. Unless part of the Mühlenberger Loch is filled in, extension of the Airbus grounds and, in particular, of the runway, will not be possible.

The Hamburg Senate is backing the project and supports the required extension of the Airbus plant. But in the middle of January the Hamburg Administrative Court decided for the second time in favour of a plaintiff who wanted to prevent extension of the plant. The court accepted the plaintiff's arguments  with the effect of imposing a delay  and is totally ignoring the benefit to the public to be derived from the proposed extension of capacity.

The situation reminds one strongly of the court judgement which almost two decades ago had the effect of halting construction of the new Munich airport for several years. In that case "experts" pronounced Flughafen München GmbH's plans as absurdly inflated and forecast that the numbers of passengers which the airport in Erdinger Moos would be required to handle would be significantly lower than the company's own projections. For this reason first of all the number of runways was reduced to two and then these had to be moved closer together than had been planned. And what is the situation today? Last year Munich's Franz-Josef Strauss airport handled around 23 million passengers, and the upward trend was so obvious that work has already begun on building a second terminal. The facts show that the experts and judges in responsible positions at that time were wrong in trying to prevent the completion of Munich II. Luckily in 1986 the Federal Administrative Court approved the building work in the last instance, even if it was only a scaled-down version of what had originally been proposed.

But Finkenwerder does not have as much time on its hands as Munich did on that occasion. If extension of the production facilities does not get under way soon, Airbus will have no other choice but to move final assembly to a different location. Hamburg would then be the loser, as the extra jobs needed to cover A380 cabin furnishing and final assembly would be created elsewhere rather than in Hamburg.

Fortunately the Administrative Court has turned down staying applications from several nature conservation organisations opposed to the project, on the grounds that these associations were not entitled to bring an action since all the land involved falls within the boundaries of Hamburg and the organisations were based outside of that area. In the opinion of the judge, the Hamburg nature conservation organisations had been involved in the formal public planning procedures as required under the regulations.

Time is pressing for Hamburg. If the legal situation regarding the development is not clarified soon, the champagne corks will be popping somewhere else.

The decision of the legal experts has far wider implications for industrial policy than one might suppose, it affects the public good as well, for the reliability of German industry in co-operative enterprises is at issue here. When it comes to international collaborations, who will take seriously a business location which cannot deliver that which it has agreed in the largest and most important aerospace project in Europe? The judges who have to decide on the partial filling in of the Mühlenberger Loch must bear that in mind when they make their decision. For one thing is certain: at issue here are not simply the interests of an individual company but the future capability of an entire industrial sector.

From page 4 of FLUG REVUE 3/2001