The European aerospace group — and Airbus parent company — EADS announced in December that several thousand jobs are to go and that it intends to sell its headquarters in Paris as part of a restructuring programme.

The job losses — representing about 4% of the total workforce — will be met by voluntary redundancies and by not replacing workers who retire or reach the end of temporary contracts.

This follows EADS’s decision to change its name to Airbus Group as of 1 January 2014, while splitting itself into three divisions. Airbus Military, the space division (Astrium) and the cyber-security business (Cassidian) will merge as Airbus Defence and Space and be based in Munich; the two other divisions will be named Airbus and Airbus Helicopters. The restructuring process is expected to be completed in the second half of next year.

Chief executive Tom Enders said: “We need to improve our competitiveness in defence and space — and we need to do it now. With our traditional markets down, we urgently need to improve access to international customers, to growth markets.”

Last year, EADS tried to negotiate a merger with the UK defence group BAE Systems, but the deal collapsed due to political opposition in France, Germany and the UK. At the time, it warned that it would have to restructure as a result of that failure. The 450 UK job losses will be “focused” on three sites: Stevenage, Portsmouth and Newport.