Joint venture with FinmeccanicaIt is a process

While opens today the Euronaval, the Act of military programming 2009-2014, which will be presented by the Council of Ministers Wednesday, will allow the champion French naval armaments, DCNS, operating reconciliations or to develop new activities, indicates concurrent sources.

A chapter entitled "Opening of the capital of certain defence enterprises" provides devices of capital management of the public group, which Thales holds 25 of the capital, that can facilitate the opening of subsidiaries or the transfer of the personal status of the State worker. Beginnings of a privatization of DCNS, as for the SNPE chemist "No", said on Friday in the entourage of Hervé Morin, the Minister of defence.

Joint venture with Finmeccanica

"It is a process." "It should not that the day J, the Act is a blocking factor," says yet another close source from the folder. The idea is to have a general legislative tool, which would be the first application to create a joint venture specializing in torpedoes with Italian Finmeccanica, the agreement concluded in December 2007. The same text can be used tomorrow for reconciliation more structuring with a private partner.

The implementation of this legislative scheme comes indeed Paris attempts to restart the consolidation of the armaments sector, Europe no longer has the means to maintain redundant industrial capabilities.

In this, the military programming law does that translate the recommendations of the new white paper of defence which prevents that "the France build partnerships bi or trilateral structuring". But if for SNPE, the road is drawn contribution of branch strategic propulsion SAFRAN, assignment of Chemistry ("Les Echos" from October 17) to DCNS, the Outlook appears much more distant.

Hervé Morin asked DCNS take language with his alter ego, ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), subsidiary of the German industrial conglomerate. The discussions which may demand time, as the political relations between the two countries are way to beautiful fixed.

Maps blurred

However, the Franco-German axis appears as more likely, in view of the difficulties with other potential partners to DCNS. Associates in conventional submarines, the French group and the Spanish Navantia are on the verge of divorce. With the Italians, the frigates French, issues of a common programme, are in very different fine. And industrial designs are opposed on both sides of the Alps. Is the United Kingdom, in the hypothesis of a common reflection on the replacement of nuclear submarines and French.

The problem is that by requesting early September have considered the feasibility of DCNS rapprochement with the Atlantic ex-Chantiers, Nicolas Sarkozy has blurred the cards. Possible synergies appear limited. The turnover of DCNS is based at 40 on the services, equipment or nuclear propulsion. The rest, armed ship design, breaks between submarines (35) and surface buildings (25).

Only this last segment can take advantage of the grounds of a civil construction, and still not completely since Electronics is an important part. Unless, as imagined by a detractor of the project, that the President has in mind to secure activities cyclic so risky of Saint-Nazaire bringing closer them, much more stable, DCNS.