The WTO disputes EC and certain member States - Large Civil Aircraft (DS 316) and US – Large Civil Aircraft (Second Complaint) (DS 353) involving allegations of subsidization of Airbus and Boeing by respectively the European Union and the United States have dominated the WTO dispute settlement system for more than 15 years and are still not settled. These disputes went through all of the stages of the WTO dispute settlement and addressed practically every aspect of the subsidies disciplines of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (“SCM Agreement”). The literally thousands of pages of the several panel and Appellate Body reports as well as the findings of the Arbitrators in these disputes thus offer a wealth of information on the interpretation and application of these subsidies disciplines. The question addressed in this paper is whether these disputes have actually assisted in clarifying the existing provisions of the SCM Agreement as envisaged in Article 3.2 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (“DSU”) thus providing the necessary security and predictability to the multilateral trading system. A critical look at some of the panel and Appellate Body findings reveals that this objective was not always met.
Keywords : subsidies, aircraft, security and predictability, export contingency, benefit, withdrawing the subsidy
