Defence Turkey: Can you describe MBDA's current activities and provide some key facts about the company for our readers?  What are MBDA's strong points and how does it differ from its competitors? Could you elaborate on the structure, responsibilities, and number of personnel working at MBDA? 

Lorenzo MARIANI: MBDA today represents the only European defense industrial group conceived with an integrated managerial structure: a successful example of integration and cooperation at a European level, which over time has really given excellent results. It is remarkable that when MBDA was born, the volume of production was around €2 billion, today it has substantially doubled it with growth also in terms of employees. Furthermore, despite a very strong domestic base, over half of this turnover has come over the years from exports. MBDA’s model is based on an integrated organization built beyond any nationality.  Its "governing body" is in fact the Executive Committee with a CEO, today Eric BÉRANGER, and eight other figures organized by function not by the nationality of the individuals. Furthermore, four of these figures also hold a statutory role for each single nation, for statutory tasks reserved to each nation, serving as the contact with domestic customers and all the statutory obligations of the civil codes that must be observed. Just to give a more recent number of employees, which were declared during the annual press conference, MBDA nowadays can rely on about 12,000 permanent employees. In 2020 it recruited about 1,100 people. This will continue in 2021 when the company is planning to recruit a further 1,200 people: this is further evidence that MBDA has been resilient and is in a growth pattern.