The European site map is not a prediction of transfers; it identifies where comparable capabilities exist. Within Thales Alenia Space, Cannes, Toulouse, Charleroi, Madrid/Tres Cantos and UK activities overlap selectively with Rome, Turin and L’Aquila in telecoms, EO, payloads, electronics, structures and systems. Within Airbus, Toulouse, Élancourt, Bremen, Friedrichshafen, Ottobrunn/Taufkirchen, Stevenage, Portsmouth, Madrid and Leiden host capabilities that partly overlap with Italian sites. [R26–R31]
Overlap does not mean one site must win and another lose. In a well-designed integration, product lines and competence centres can be distributed according to excellence, utilisation and customer access, creating complementary specialisation. Risk arises when lead-site choices lack transparent criteria or when rationalisation concentrates architecture and new investment where scale is already larger.
Comparison therefore needs to go beyond hourly labour cost. Heritage, certification, assets, backlog, customer proximity, skills availability, installed capex and supply-chain capacity all affect the true cost of moving capability. An updated functional map is a prerequisite for distinguishing industrial synergy from simple geographic concentration.
Comparable sites create internal competition for future product lines; the answer is not to deny it but to make allocation criteria transparent.
