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I. Introduction
This article outlines the legal findings rendered by the panel and by the Appellate Body (AB) in the WTO Airbus dispute.1 The US launched this case to probe the WTO-consistency of a number of subsidies allegedly bestowed by the EU and four of its Member States - France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom - to Airbus, the European manufacturer of large civil aircrafts (LCA). Due to the breath of the US challenge and to the fact-intensity of the proceedings, this became one of the longest and most complex cases ever litigated under the WTO dispute settlement procedures.
This contribution focuses solely on the Airbus case. However, this case must be gauged together with its twin, the WTO Boeing dispute,2 launched by the EU to test the consistency with WTO law of a number of US subsidies granted to Boeing, the American LCA manufacturer. The WTO aircraftdisputes pitched the two sides of the Atlantic in an all-out legal battle at the WTO over decades of support granted to the two industrial behemoths to foster their competitiveness.3
This work does not engage critically with the findings of the panel and of the AB, it just attempts to present them clearly, dwelling on their underlining rationale. This dispute concerns more than three hundreds separate instances of alleged subsidization over almost four decades. It thus seems useful to supply the reader with a thorough case summary which condenses a humongous number of pages of reports and submissions and which focuses on the most significant junctions of the dispute.
The high fact-intensity of this dispute cannot however eclipse the number of fascinating legal issues which were put in front of the panel and of the AB. The latter in particular had the chance to widen and deepen its case law on various facets of the disciplines imposed by WTO law on the provision of subsidies. The following are just some of the captivating highlights contained in the appellate review: the guidance offered on the way in which subsidies and their adverse effects expire, dissipate, terminate or are otherwise removed or withdrawn; the articulation of the test to determine the de facto export contingency of subsidies; the reiteration of the holistic analysis required to assess the specificity...