The European Union Thursday appealed a World Trade Organization ruling that rejected significant portions of a complaint from the bloc over subsidies to Boeing, the WTO said.
‘On 29 June the European Union filed an appeal regarding the panel report,’ the trade body said in a short statement, referring to a June 9 ruling from a WTO panel, without providing further details.
This month's ruling was the latest blow in the decade-long clash between the titans of the civil aircraft industry, which has seen both Airbus and Boeing score points along the way.
The WTO found in March 2012 that billions of dollars of subsidies to Boeing were illegal and notified the United States to bring them to an end.
But just a few months later, the European Union filed a new complaint with the global trade body, alleging that Washington was not complying with that order.
In the June 9 ruling, WTO said it had concluded that the state of Washington had continued to dish out subsidies totalling $325 million in the form of tax cuts to Boeing between 2013 and 2015.
It agreed with Brussels that the United States had not taken ‘appropriate steps to remove the adverse effects or ... withdraw the subsidy’.
But it also rejected significant portions of the EU complaint, finding that Brussels had failed to demonstrate that US subsidies after 2012 to Boeing's research and development programmes were harming EU interests through lost sales and price cuts.
Washington hailed the ruling as a victory, saying the WTO panel had found that 28 of the 29 programmes it examined were in compliance.
The United States has meanwhile also said that it plans to appeal the June 9 ruling.
The EU has also been reprimanded by the WTO during the tit-for-tat conflict between Airbus and Boeing.
In September, a WTO panel found that Brussels had not respected a 2011 ruling ordering it to take steps to withdraw several support and subsidy programmes for Airbus.
The WTO did not put a value on those programmes but Boeing said they amounted to $22 billion worth of illegal support for Airbus development and sales.
The EU has appealed against that decision, insisting that the subsidies in question had been discontinued.
The WTO, which aims to create a level playing field in global trade, does not have the ability to force compliance with its rulings, but can approve retaliatory measures which in theory can pressure trade manipulators to come into line.
