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 By Charlotte Bailey

Feb. 12, 2026, © Leeham News, Hamburg: The European supply chain support strategy aims to streamline self-assessment and resilience.

 Spain is to become the fourth country to join the European Aero Excellence International initiative, a multi-national program intended to help suppliers self-assess their own maturity levels and work towards building greater operational resilience. The announcement was made in December at the Hamburg Aviation Forum.

The relatively new scheme builds on a program first launched by the French Aerospace Industries Association (GIFAS) in 2023 and was co-developed by respective national aerospace and defense associations. These include Germany’s BDLI and the UK’s ADS Group. A representative from each trade association is joined on Aero Excellence’s board by three national industrial members.

Under Aero Excellence, participating suppliers (categorized across five areas) are supported to self-assess their own maturity level before an official assessment is made. Three levels of maturity (bronze, silver and gold) are then awarded by Aero Excellence assessors, a validation recognised industry-wide and intended to negate lengthy separate and repetitive individual assessments.

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury previously described Aero Excellence’s intention to establish a universally recognised “maturity benchmark” designed to “strengthen the operational, environmental and cyber excellence of our industries in order to meet future challenges and improve competitiveness.”