GENEVA, Switzerland

Airbus claimed Tuesday that it won the bulk of a World Trade Organization ruling on a six-year-old clash pitting the European aerospace giant against its arch rival Boeing over state subsidies.

But EU and US officials were mum on the contents of the confidential judgement, while Boeing has yet to react following the ruling.

Transmitted only to the two parties involved in the litigation, the 1,000-page decision on the dispute brought by the United States against the European Union over alleged subsidies paid to Airbus is however only the first volume of the long-running, acrimonious saga.

Another ruling on a counter-complaint brought by the EU against US aid for Boeing is expected later this year, suggesting that the jury remains out on who might have won the overall dispute, analysts said.

EU trade commission spokesman John Clancy also cautioned against being “too hasty in claiming any victory.”

“It is only when we get the second report that we will have a sense of how to move forward, including whether we move towards a negotiated settlement” with the United States, Clancy told AFP.

“Cases like this are never black and white, and this is just one further step in the litigation,” he added in a statement.

But Airbus swiftly claimed in a statement that the ruling rejected “70 per cent of the US claims.”

It added that the WTO panel had determined that reimbursable EU loans made to Airbus amounted to a “legal and compliant instrument of partnership between government and industry.”

It also “refused the US request for remedies as legally inappropriate,” claimed Airbus.

The group however, acknowledged that the panel found that some of the loans it received contained “a certain element of subsidy.”

Boeing’s vice president for executive, legislative and regulatory affairs Ted Austell had said before the full ruling that the WTO would “uphold all of the major US claims.”

The decision on the first US complaint was mostly already issued confidentially in September in the form of an interim ruling by the WTO panel.

However, unusually little has filtered out in six months.

Washington and European capitals have kept the report tightly under wraps due to trade secrets contained in the lengthy ruling.

There appeared, however, to be key differences in the reading of the interim report, as borne out by views of European aid to Airbus’s future A350 airliner.

Germany said Monday that it was ready to grant a 1.1-billion-euro loan to develop the Airbus A350 long-haul passenger aircraft after preconditions were met, suggesting that the conditions were in line with WTO rules.

Boeing however slammed the move for flouting WTO legislation.

Austell said in a statement that Germany’s planned move was one that “flies in the face of both the expected WTO decision and the rules-based global trading system we’ve all endorsed.”

For analysts, Tuesday’s ruling is far from the end of the battle between the two aerospace giants.

“We can expect no answer for this commercial battle in the next few years,” said analysts from French investment group CM-CIC Securities.

“In fact, the preliminary report of the WTO on the counter-complaint which was brought by the EU against the US is expected by June.

“It is possible that each party would file appeals, which could bring about a final ruling in 2013 at the earliest,” said the analysts.

In its complaint lodged in 2004, Washington charged that the EU had illegally provided subsidies worth up to US$200 billion (139 billion euros) to Airbus.

It said an accord that allowed Brussels to provide up to a third of development costs of new airliners was no longer valid since Airbus had by then become a major industry player and was not the fledgling firm it was when the deal was struck.

On the same day, the EU retaliated with a complaint against Washington’s help to Boeing, accusing Washington of violating international trade rules by funnelling subsidies to civil aviation through military research funds.

Some US$23 billion of subsidies were masked as defence research, Brussels claimed.

If the damage to European aviation industry were calculated using the same figures as the US, it would amount to some 305 billion dollars, it added.