Brussels, 15/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - On 23 January the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is expected to begin arbitration procedures for verifying the legality of anti-subsidy measures imposed by the Union since last summer on a significant number of electronic micro-circuits from South Korea - circuits for refreshing dynamic memories (DRAM). Seoul is ready to reiterate its request to the disputes panel body, which it will then endorse automatically (it rejected it the first time around on 1 December).
Korea will be going to the experts (who are supposed to be appointed at the end of February) to defer the legality of the financing they obtained through the Hynix company in the form of bank loans (with no influence from the state) while the EU is arguing the opposite. Drawing on the results of an investigation launched in July 2002, the Union will attempt to thus convince the multilateral arbiter that the single producer of "Dram" benefited from unfair subsidies granted through banks owned or controlled by the Korean state, which gave it a significant competitive advantage and damaged European "micro chip" producers.