WTO says it has given confidential ruling on Airbus-Boeing dispute to EU, US
GENEVA
The World Trade Organization on Friday handed the United States and European Union its long-awaited intial decision in their dispute over government financing for airplane makers.
"It's gone," said WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell.
The highly confidential ruling gives a ruling on a U.S. complaint that asserted Airbus received an unfair boost from billions of dollars in European government financing to develop new airplanes.
There was no initial indication which way the ruling went.
Lutz Guellner, spokesman for the European trade commissioner, said "We can confirm that we have received the confidential interim report from the WTO secretariate. It is a long document of more than 1.000 pages which we will study carefully."
The so-called launch aid was in the form of loans to Airbus as it overtook Boeing as the world's top producer of commercial airplanes.
The decision was treated with extreme secrecy, in part because of sensitive company information contained in it.
One paper copy of the decision was handed to each side as well as one read-only copy on a computer disk. But WTO refrained from giving each side a digital version that could be passed on easily to others.
It is one of two main disputes in the Boeing-Airbus rivalry over what is projected to be a $3.2 trillion global aviation market over the next 20 years. In the other case, the Europeans maintain that the U.S. company benefited from government subsidies from the Defense Department and NASA.
Guellner said, "It is important to recall that this report is only half of the story, and we await the interim report in the case launched by the EU against the U.S., which we expect to be issued in a few months."
