The World Trade Organization (WTO) has rejected much of Airbus’s July 2010 appeal against its ruling that the European airframer has unfairly benefitted from subsidies, but its May 18 judgment still leaves plenty of scope for the protagonists to argue over how it gets interpreted. The WTO’s Appellate Body found that funds provided by the governments of France, Germany, Spain and the UK for all of Airbus’s main airliner programs breached international trade agreements.
However, the Appellate Body did overturn an earlier ruling that loans repaid with interest to the governments concerned by Airbus constituted illegal subsidies, prompting Airbus to claim overall victory. Airbus argues that, essentially, the ruling covers all the funds in questions and so fundamentally undermines the legal case made by the U.S. side in the long-running WTO case. Boeing disagrees, claiming the appeal ruling to be “a clear, final win for fair trade that will level the playing field for America’s aerospace workers.”
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