AIRBUS BOEING DISPUTE HEATS UP AS EU AND US ARGUE ABOUT INFORMATION SHARING

Access to information about grants to Airbus and Boeing remains at the core of the transatlantic dispute over civil aircraft subsidies, as the EU and the US crossed swords again in a meeting of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body on 14 March.

The EU requested the initiation of an information gathering process under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures -- the so-called 'Annex V procedure' that would allow for the examination of grants given to private companies in order to determine whether 'serious prejudice' has been caused to the interests of a Member. It repeated this request at the 17 March DSB meeting.

The EU believes that the Annex V procedure -- which would require the US to disclose the relevant information -- should be automatically initiated upon its request. However, the US contends that this is not the case.

The EU's request pertains to the second panel in the complex dispute, which was created in February to address an EU complaint about 13 additional subsidy programmes which the US insisted were outside the mandate of the original panel as established in July 2005 (see BRIDGES Weekly, 27 July 2005). In response to the EU's earlier demands for information, the US had argued that it did not need to disclose anything about the grants given to Boeing under the 13 programmes, insisting that they were not within the WTO's current mandate.

The next steps are projected to include a US request for the establishment of a panel on similar grounds as the EU's second panel request. The then four panels may subsequently be fused, which would allow all claims to be addressed collectively.

The parties have asked the original panels to suspend their timetables, a delay that is likely to result in the postponement of the panel report, initially expected in early 2007.

ICTSD reporting: "U.S., EU Lock Horns Over Plane Subsidies," FORBES, 14 March 2006.