Tuesday, July 30, 2024
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Ryanair has recognized the EU Court of Justice’s decision on Austrian State assistance backing
Lufthansa-owned Austrian Airlines compared to other EU airlines. In other cases regarding Covid-19 State assistance, the EU General Court administrated that billions of euros in assistance obtained by Lufthansa, Air France, KLM and SAS along with few Italian airlines were illegal.
The European Commission’s Directorate General for Competition has still not recuperated the improper aid, nor has it executed any actions to rectify the harm to competition instigated by the German, Dutch, French, Swedish, Danish and Italian administrations backing their domestic airlines over other EU airlines, in disagreement of EU law.
The European airline based in Dublin had filed more than 20 complaints against the EU Commission for
favoring large sums of euros in state assistance to airlines all through the pandemic times. Ryanair
contended that the backing given to carriers had produced one-sided benefits.
Ryanair appealed to the CJEU after a previous committee also found supporting the loan from Austria
to Austrian Airlines. The final decision acknowledged that Ryanair had won its case against state assistance allowed to Lufthansa, Condor, TAP and KLM but lost the conflict against SAS, Air France and Finnair.