In what way is Airbus different? (Honest question of someone who has no knowledge about this industry.)
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.
So it's not a company built by politicians from many European companies AFAIK.