> Airbus is absolutely crushing Boeing in terms of quality. Granted, we are woefully behind on the 'space' part of aerospace

Such a hyperbole statement.

Airbus has the edge in the narrowbody aircraft market, especially A321, while Boeing is plagued by 737 MAX problem.

OTOH Airbus is well behind Boeing in the widebody segment. Boeing had 1,464 787 orders as of Aug 2019, 882 of those had been delivered. Airbus had only sold 913 A350. A380 has been discontinued while Boeing can still count on B748 freighter.

Of course 2020 threw a wrench to the airline industry and it remains to be seen how well it will recover post pandemic. Both Airbus and Boeing are affected deeply.

You conveniently forgot the a330 which is Airbus' most successful widebody.

You are right that for now, Boeing is better in widebodies. But let's see Boeing new aircraft program, because currently Airbus is better prepared for the future.

> Granted, we are woefully behind on the 'space' part of aerospace.

Well, SpaceX caught with the pants down to everyone. Before the revolution of the reusable Falcon 9, the Ariane 5 was a fine reliable rocket.

Sadly, the Ariane 6 design predates the reusable revolution of SpaceX, how ever they are working on reusable Arianes that are similar to the Falcon 9 and Spaceship (https://www.techforspace.com/european-space-sector/european-...).

> Except for everyone in the West scrambling to replace Huawei with Ericsson tech.

That's entirely political and nothing to do with the tech. Huawei's tech is arguably better, cheaper (and available now).

How much of Huawei's research is done in EU? They have at least three research facilities in Sweden alone. Ericsson does a lot of research in the US. All of these companies are global, so to assign their research to only the country where they're headquartered gets a bit nonsensical.

Huawei’s tech is better per $ because they skipped years of R&D that they didn’t have to price in. I remember when their products included Cisco manuals.

It is cheaper since the chinede spy agencies sponsor it.

If you knew that important people would use your phones you could as well give them for free - easier to spy on them.

What, apart from using, does CERN have to do with energy?

> CERN is anchored to the EU. ITER is anchored to the EU.

Anchored, yeah sure. So you're listing something that isn't in the EU, which is revealing. ITER is entirely irrelevant. It's a pork project that won't result in much. The biggest breakthroughs in fusion will derive from smaller projects, not giant slow-moving projects like ITER. The next 20-30 years of energy generation is wind, natural gas, oil, solar, some hydrogen and nuclear (and primarily only China is brave enough to build that). Fusion will make zero contribution in that time.

> BioNtech made the first breakthrough on a COVID vaccine.

Moderna was just as well positioned as BioNtech, you're more than reaching. Russia and China also have apparently successful vaccines being deployed.

> The EU has many issues, but losing leadership in the sectors you mentioned is not one of them.

That's true in the sense that the EU never had leadership in most fields to begin with.

Fusion research needs a lot of money and resources. I honestly doubt it can be done by a startup. Nuclear fission was done by very well funded military research. It is true that China has licensed basically every nuclear design, but France is still a leader in nuclear fission.

I believe that if startups can keep losing billions each year and go public without ever running a profit, then startups may just as well be able to create a fusion power plant.

> Anchored, yeah sure. So you're listing something that isn't in the EU, which is revealing

It is surrounded by EU countries, in a country that is a pseudo-EU member. You're reaching.

> ITER is entirely irrelevant. It's a pork project that won't result in much.

Unless you have a seer's eye, these kinds of claims are baseless.

> The next 20-30 years of energy generation is wind, natural gas, oil, solar, some hydrogen and nuclear (and primarily only China is brave enough to build that)

Agreed and a sad state of affairs

> Moderna was just as well positioned as BioNtech

Which makes Moderna a leader too? It doesn't diminish BioNtech's work.

> That's true in the sense that the EU never had leadership in most fields to begin with.

You literally had to ignore multiple points in my parent comment to even be able to make this claim. Revealing..

Edit: not to mention we are commenting under an article that partly concerns ASML..