WTO Says EU Failed to Comply with Airbus Subsidy Ruling

The ruling is part of a series of tit-for-tat transatlantic complaints about aircraft subsidies that together make up the world’s largest trade dispute, still raging after 12 years of bitter arguments over support for Airbus and its rival Boeing. The WTO said the EU and four nations – Britain, France, Germany and Spain – had failed to comply with earlier rulings against all but two of 36 contested measures, including billions of dollars of European government loans to Airbus. The loans were a “genuine and substantial” cause of significant lost sales for Airbus’s U.S. competitor Boeing, it said. In a blow to Europe’s long-held belief that its newest and costliest jetliner, the A350, fell outside the case, the WTO for the first time said it had been subsidized but rejected U.S. claims it fell into the most toxic category of “prohibited” aid.