Well, the difference in this case is a) Airbus provided a in it's early days a way for carriers to put presure on Boeing and b) that Airbus is a defacto french company (forget about all the crap of being french-german blablabla), Airbus is french.

But when you see hiw much damage was done by to-little-to-late political infighting going on in and around Airbus / EADS the situation would be a lot different without it. Examples include the wiring issues on the A380, engine issues on the A400M, redundant fighter development with the Eurofighter and the Rafale and various issues regarding the multinational helicopters like the Tiger and the NH90 (which mean NATO Helicopter of the 90s, 1990 to be exact...).

What makes the situation even more difficult for Ariane Space and ESA is the fact that space transportation is to a huge part a state run business, one example includes the european satellite navigation system Gallileo. And the very much extends to ESA and Ariane. In most of this cases it boils down to two different, yet closly related things: culteral difference and political powerplays. The later on all levels, management and politics.

Just as an example, germans (I'm german) tend to somewhat over-engineer things. A prime exaple in this case is the gradual evolution of Ariane 5. Projects like this a great for the industry implementing them (in the old market place without any feasable alternative, or very few of them). And it's german engineer speaking. Intheory he might be right since it reduces risk. But the main assumption this concept builds on is the existance of the political commitment to it over the long run. It could be there at the beginning, but then culteral differences will kick in.

And this how it most likely will play out (if Ariane 5ME gets its go):

Big start, Ariane Space, EADS and ESA all working together (at least as far as PR goes). Then there will be a lot of behind the door bickering about work-share (which the franch will certainly win since Germany is only concerned with building cars that go fast in a straight line). To make it not to obvious, the German part will get some work that might even look great on paper, but the actaul decisions will be met in France (and since the french and germans have the trouble understanding each other, these decisions will miss some important points, like wiring...).

Once this setting is is put in place (read in around 2 - 3 years after the launch) Ariane 5ME will be to late, so it will more be like Ariane 6 in disguise (that won't be comunicated like this, of course. It will more likely be put as anecessary adaption to changed sircumstances or somethuing like that). The main reason why it wouldn't be reset is that a reset would require a new battle to get the same power balance, but right now you already have the green light to go ahead. Plus, even if a reset would yield the more or less same french-german balance, the people will be different. So everybody stick to his chair.

And then, the franch are going to get there Ariane 6 with some years of delay and a different naem in the worng programm with around half the people working on a different rocket. And since the franch are very much content with ahvning won yet another political battle without the other side realizing it there will be a lot of cheers and champagne and stuff.

Only the you end up with a late, over budget, under spec rocket and expensive launch costs.

And now compare that to SpaceX ( as an example) using state funded launches to develop state-of the art rockets in a much shorter time frame and yields much cheaper launch costs.

I will go even further than Musk and say no matter what Ariane Space is doing (Ariane 5ME or Arinae 6), they will loose as long as it is a franch-german-pan-euorpean endeavour. And this will even further marginalize the euopean space industry, which is the last thing both France Germany want.