France and Germany urged the United States to stop subsidizing Boeing, ITAR-TASS reports. Germany’s Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel and his French counterpart Arnaud Montebourg are of the opinion that being supported by the government, the American aircraft manufacturer is in breach of the rules of fair competition. By doing this, the two ministers want to back Airbus.
“We expect the European Commission, in its current trade negotiations, to attract the attention of the United States on that fact that they are violating WTO (World Trade Organisation) rules by giving subsidies to their industry,” Sigmar Gabriel said.
Boeing and Airbus have been competing for the market for a while. The two aviation giants have accused each other of receiving funds in subsides from the authorities more than once. Recently, they have been fighting for the Asian market, for the Chinese one in particular. In 2013, American Boeing provided this Asian country with 143 aircrafts, while French Airbus equipped it with 133.
Last year, Airbus parent EADS, which was recently renamed Airbus Group, sold 626 aircrafts in total. Besides, the EADS scored a record order book of 1,619 planes. The full value of orders was of $240.5 billion in 2013.
Nevertheless, Boeing outpaced Airbus selling 22 crafts more. The total amount of orders came in at 1,531. In the first five months of 2014, Airbus vended 248 aircrafts compared to 271 Boeing did. In the meantime, Airbus took orders for delivery of 306 crafts, while the American company had 439 planes on order. The number of cancelled orders came in at 103 for Airbus and 54 for Boeing.