Ryanair to sue European Commission over state aid airlines

Wednesday, 10 Jul, 2007 0

Ryanair is to sue the European Commission in the European Courts for its failure to take action over state aid airlines.

It said complaints over Air France, Lufthansa, Alitalia and Olympic Airways were submitted to the Commission over a year ago and involved “hundreds of millions of Euro in illegal state aids being granted by the French, German, Italian and Greek governments to subsidise their flag carrier airlines”.

Ryanair’s head of regulatory affairs, Jim Callaghan, said: “This is another example of the Commission’s twin track approach to state aid.

“On one hand they refuse to take action against serious violations of the state aid rules by national governments to protect their flag carrier airlines, while at the same time they launch bogus investigations against small regional and secondary airports like Charleroi.

“The foolishness of the Commission’s Charleroi decision is that Ryanair now actually has a lower cost base in Charleroi.

“It appears as always that the Commission applies one rule for the high fare flag carrier airlines and state owned primary airports, but a different one for low cost airlines like Ryanair and the numerous regional and secondary airports that are offering competition and lower fares to the travelling public.”

By Bev Fearis

Bev

Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.

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