airbus was made as a very deliberate political project from various european countries to stay competitive in the airline bussiness.

Mind you this happened around the same time many foundations of a lot of european institutions where formed, and airbus is the primary example of a intra-european company in both its bussiness form (being an S.E[0]) aswell as in the way its products get build across different member states.

Airbus has done the thing that the EU aims to do on a political scale, merge many different smaller european entities to stay competitive against both the US and China on the global scale.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea

Which makes Airbus even more impressive, TBH. How many "deliberate political project from various countries to stay competitive in the X business" can you think of that actually became successful?

Arianespace of course a huge success for a brief period, until it wasn't.

Boeing feels interesting through this lens, too - tracking the rise and decline of American business culture

Interesting question. ASML?

ASML was one company formed out of Philips' microchip division (NXP the other part from that division).

So it's not a company built by politicians from many European companies AFAIK.