Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-13-Speech-2-388"
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"en.20071113.35.2-388"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I welcome this debate and the Commission’s presence here to discuss the legal dispute between Europe and the United States, which has been running since 2004, when Washington took a case in the WTO against the European aid granted to Airbus.
Faced with this attack, Europe, and the European Commission in particular, must show determination and conviction in order to defend a sector of undoubted economic importance. Indeed, the civil aviation sector in Europe, of which Airbus is the jewel in the crown, is the global showcase for European collaboration and European technological expertise. Now that the US Congress has pledged its full support for Boeing, it is the duty of the European Commission and Europe as a whole to make a political commitment to the Airbus cause.
Just a few weeks before the WTO’s dispute settlement body takes its decision, I believe that it is vital for the European Union to reiterate its support for Airbus. This issue is much more than a simple conflict between two aviation giants. It affects our capacity to defend a certain vision of the European commitment to our major projects and our industries. Our industrial policy must not be limited solely to the Union’s competition policy.
The US complaint in the WTO against the European mechanism of repayable loans for the aviation sector is, in my view, unfounded and surprising. It is unfounded because, by definition, the repayable loans are repaid. They are repaid to the extent that the European states have been able to get a return on their investment, and since 1992 Airbus has repaid 40% more than the sums loaned to it. The US criticism is also unfounded because the bilateral agreement signed between the European Union and the United States – broken unilaterally by the US in 2004, as the Commissioner said – authorised direct and indirect public aid to the civil aviation industry.
This complaint is surprising because the United States is accusing Airbus of having been subsidised even though Boeing benefits from a quasi-monopoly of extensive equipment programmes of the US army and NASA and public support for military development programmes. Therefore, unlike the indirect US aid that is not repaid and is incompatible with the provisions of the SMC Agreement and 1994 GATT, the system of repayable loans could not be considered to be an infringement of WTO rules.
I thus hope that the European Commission defends resolutely this legitimate position. In this respect, and having regard to the extreme importance of this matter for the future of the European aviation sector, what specific arguments does the Commission intend to put forward to defend Airbus in the WTO?
I would also like to point out that both the United States and the European Union risk seeing all or part of their public aviation support mechanisms condemned by the WTO. To avoid this, the parties had raised the possibility of an amicable solution. Can the European Commission tell us whether it plans to go down that path as mentioned? It is crucial to explore all possible solutions because the future of thousands of people, companies and regions throughout Europe depends on this sector and a positive outcome to this conflict."@en1
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