The United States attacks the EU's 3 billion euro loan to Airbus: the customs truce concluded in 2021 is floundering

Washington is stepping up to the plate after the colossal loan granted by the European Union to Airbus. “I sincerely hoped that distorting European subsidies to Airbus would be a thing of the past,” lamented this Monday, October 26, the United States Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer. Public aid is qualified as distorting when it distorts competition by granting an unfair advantage to the recipient companies.

In June, the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced a record loan of 3 billion euros to the aircraft manufacturer to finance its research and development activities. “This new financing – unprecedented in the history of the EIB – aims to provide Airbus not only with the capacity but also with the flexibility necessary to invest in long-term research, development and innovation, in the commercial aviation as well as security and defense sectors,” the vice-president of the institution, Ambroise Fayolle, then detailed to AFP.

If the American official insists on the urgency of the situation, it is because he believes that it could derail the customs truce concluded in 2021 between the United States and the European Union around a dispute over large civil aircraft. It followed more than fifteen years of mutual accusations of unfair practices, centered mainly on subsidies to private companies such as Boeing and Airbus.

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Above all, this truce allowed the suspension of customs duties introduced in 2019 by the United States on certain European products, as well as that of tariff measures put in place the following year by the EU in response. Billions of dollars worth of assets were affected. Concluded under the presidency of Joe Biden, the truce was to last five years, but it has since been extended indefinitely, in a context of commercial rapprochement between Brussels and Washington.

Washington calls for resolving the situation “as quickly as possible”.

The 2021 truce provides in particular that “any financing intended for the production or development” of aviation devices will be done under “market conditions”, according to a press release published by the office of the American trade representative when this agreement was announced. The objective is that an aircraft manufacturer does not benefit from financing conditions (interest rates, repayment terms, etc.) that are more advantageous than if it borrowed from a private establishment.

The agreement also provides that “any funding intended for research and development” will be allocated “through an open and transparent procedure”. However, Jamieson Greer said on Monday he was concerned by the fact that his office had received “no details regarding this loan” granted to Airbus by the EIB. He therefore calls for resolving the situation “as quickly as possible”.

Machine-translated from French