The French aerospace industry moves into a pivotal year 2025 and calls for stakeholder support

Paris, January 9th, 2025 – As 2025 begins, the French aerospace sector, represented by the French Aerospace Industries Association GIFAS, is preparing to meet a number of major geostrategic and industrial challenges. Reconciling the need to ramp up production, maintain quality and decarbonise the sector is still a major challenge for the industry, federated by GIFAS which now counts 485 active members (up from 427 in January 2024), including 76 start-ups.

“The aerospace sector is a champion industry for France, with over 10 years’ worth of orders on its books. It contributes to the country’s sovereignty and international outreach. But we shouldn’t take its success for granted. Unless it receives strong, long-term support from the government, the industry will not succeed in rising to the unprecedented global challenges it faces today. We must ensure that the aerospace sector remains a strength for France, to build tomorrow’s industry, as a key pillar of our economic, technological and security independence”, underlines Guillaume Faury, President of GIFAS.

The industry calls for greater stakeholder support and commitment, and makes six recommendations for 2025:

1. Maintain CORAC funding at €300M per year through to 2027, to support the most innovative, collaborative ‘low-carbon’ projects, to develop next-generation aircraft.

2. Support the emergence of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), which will play a key role in the environmental transition of aviation with a 50% contribution, regulate any increase in these fuels and limit the airline ticket solidarity tax (TSBA).

3. Keep the Research Tax Credit, which represents €700M for the aerospace industry and is vital for its competitiveness.

4. Stabilise taxes and contributions weighing on companies, from major corporations to SMEs, to foster their growth.

5. Maintain funding under the multi-year Defence Spending Law (LPM), with a budget of €3.3 bn in 2025, to support our defence effort and position our companies in international markets.

6. Loosen the regulatory stranglehold to unleash the industry’s potential for innovation and competitiveness.

The French industry is determined to remain the world leader (one of the few to rank as such) given the social, economic and territorial impacts it represents for the country and the whole world in terms of decarbonising aviation. However, the weighty tax burden it faces is detrimental to competitiveness and hinders the investment needed to support its environmental transformation.

Download the press release.