E.U. asserts victory in dispute with Boeing

The long-running trans-Atlantic argument over government support of the world's two biggest aircraft makers has gained fresh momentum as a trade panel has found that Boeing received subsidies that violated global trade rules, people briefed on the decision have said.

U.S. lawmakers said Wednesday that the subsidies, $5 billion from national and state agencies, were just a fraction of the $24 billion that Europe had alleged and were far less sweeping than the benefits its rival, Airbus, had received.

But European leaders said the finding, by a panel of the World Trade Organization, showed that the United States had also relied on subsidies in the fight for plane sales. They said the ruling would help prompt negotiations to resolve the problems.

The decision is an interim finding and subject to appeal. But it could bring an epic battle over subsidies in the aircraft industry to a climax and redefine the competitive landscape, not only for Boeing and Airbus, but also for new competitors in other regions.

In a case decided in June, the W.T.O. found that Airbus had benefited from four decades of improper subsidies to vault past Boeing to become the world's top jet builder.

That ruling concluded that Airbus had received the subsidies, including $15 billion in loans from European governments at below-market interest rates and several billion dollars in grants, to produce its six best-selling models. It also concluded that it ''would not have been possible for Airbus to have launched all these models, as originally designed and at the times it did,'' without the subsidies.

The ruling Wednesday came in a countersuit by the European Union, which contended that Boeing had received nearly $24 billion in subsidies since the 1980s from research and development contracts for space and military agencies and in tax breaks from three states.

That assistance, the Europeans argued, had placed Airbus at a competitive disadvantage in the North American market, the world's second-largest in terms of passenger traffic after the Asia-Pacific region.

U.S. and European officials, who spoke anonymously because the ruling had not been released publicly, said the W.T.O. panel had found that Boeing had received subsidies through some of the research contracts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Pentagon, as well as through tax incentives linked to its facilities in Washington State, Kansas and Illinois.

Still, the Americans said that only $2.6 billion in research money had been found to involve subsidies, compared with the more than $10 billion claimed by the European Union. And the trade panel pegged the value of the subsidies provided by the three states at about $400 million, a far lower total than the Europeans had claimed.

European officials said the report did not estimate the value of the subsidies that Boeing gained from its military work. Both sides said the panel had reiterated an earlier finding that Boeing had received $2.2 billion in export-related aid under a program phased out in 2006.

Trade officials said the report was more than 1,000 pages long, and it was not immediately clear how the panel had decided which research contracts constituted subsidies.

European officials had contended in their suit that Boeing had been able to take advantage of its research for NASA and the Pentagon to make technological advances in its commercial jets.

The French transport minister, Dominique Bussereau, and the French environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, said in a statement that they were ''extremely satisfied'' by the interim findings.