Brussels / Geneva, 13/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Geneva judgement on the amount - probably without precedent - of sanctions that the Union has the right to impose on the US in the "FSC" affair ("Foreign Sales Corporation") is expected on both sides of the Atlantic for Monday. It cannot however be ruled out that the experts responsible for ruling on this sensitive issue should prolong the situation. "We do not know exactly when the verdict will come", sources both in Brussels and Geneva said on Thursday. "The deadlines have already gone by by a long time, and there are no more really", they said. Officially, no figure has been put forward in the last furlong of the procedure. Remains that in the hypothesis that, as rumours say, the arbiters reach a sum closer to the American estimates ($956 million) than the European (4.043 billion), the trade value that the Union will have a right to recuperate through sanctions (surtaxes) to compensate for the harm suffered through American subsidies will be no less colossal. But as in the case of steel, the EU prefers, rather than "shooting", to stick to threats in the hope of securing the pure and simple abolition be Washington of the banned subsidies, And ensure that it does not simply limit itself to an umpteenth "lifting" of a system that has lasted decades in different forms (FISC, FSC, etc.). Declarations of intent have been made along these lines, on the American side, up to the highest level (George Bush at the transatlantic summit). "The ball is in their court", sources in Brussels say.