The World Trade Organisation has issued its first ruling in the US complaint against European Union subsidies to Airbus, WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said today.
The confidential report was distributed to US and European diplomats in Geneva. The ruling will not be publicly released for months and no details of its contents were immediately available.
The three-member WTO dispute settlement panel is expected to agree with complainant Washington that the billions of euros of "launch aid" Airbus received to build the A380 and other top-selling planes was anti-competitive and broke trade laws.
Such a finding could limit Airbus' options to finance new airliners, such as the wide-body A350 due in the next decade, and also affect how industry rivals in Brazil, Canada, China, Russia and Japan fuel their expansion.
"Of course we will be very interested because it may affect the way others operate," said Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who flew to New Delhi on an Embraer jet. Embraer and its Canadian rival Bombardier were also embroiled in years of WTO litigation over aircraft subsidies.
The Airbus case, and a counter-claim by Brussels about support to Boeing, whose findings are expected in six months, represent the biggest and most commercially significant dispute in WTO history.
Reuters