WTO easier on Boeing than claimed: sources

PARIS (Reuters) - The World Trade Organization has found Boeing benefited from federal and other subsidies but to a much lower extent than its European adversaries suggest, two U.S. sources familiar with the case said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity after a Geneva trade panel issued a confidential interim report on a European Union counter-suit over aircraft subsidies, they said the WTO had found subsidies worth about $5 billion including $2 billion which have already been subject to an earlier settlement.

The $3 billion or so in new subsidies were mainly linked to historical payments provided to the U.S. planemaker by NASA, the sources said. The EU had argued NASA had helped Boeing by providing research contracts with too little in return.

Sources on both sides of the dispute agreed the EU had failed to make a charge stick that Boeing had received "prohibited" subsidies through incentives in Washington state.

Subsidies provided by the home state to most Boeing commercial production only rose to the level of "actionable" support, which do not require immediate remedies.

Sources disagreed over how much of the aid from Washington state fell into this category, with European sources saying the EU had won convincingly and a U.S. source saying the EU victory there was "infinitesimal."

"It is a repudiation of Europe's view that Boeing enjoyed subsidies anywhere comparable to what Airbus enjoyed in launch aid," a source close to the U.S. side of the case said.

A European source said the EU had prevailed in most of the $24 billion of claims it had brought over allegations of unfair federal, state and local aid to Boeing.

U.S. sources said the core claim -- excluding assumptions about the future -- only covered $19 billion including $2 billion aid from the Foreign Sales Corp already dealt with.

Of the remaining $17 billion, European claims covering some 80 percent by value of alleged subsidy were rejected, they said.