Court rejects appeal over Air France/KLM merger

A TOP EU court has thrown out an attempt by low-cost airline easyJet to derail the merger of Air France and Dutch peer KLM, upholding an earlier decision by the European Commission.

Air France and KLM in 2003 unveiled their plans to merge, which the European Commission’s antitrust officials approved in February 2004.

But easyJet, a competitor of both airlines, asked the European court to scrap the commission’s approval, saying the EU executive failed to assess properly the impact of the merger.

“The pleas put forward by easyJet do not prove that the commission committed manifest errors of assessment in declaring the merger compatible with the common market,” the Court of First Instance, the European Union’s second-highest court, said in a statement.

The court rejected easyJet’s arguments in their entirety, the statement said.

An easyJet spokesman shrugged off the ruling.

“We knew we were not going to get the decision annulled, but what we wanted was the European Commission to be given a rap on the knuckles for not doing their job properly. So we will have to wait and see what the complex text says later,” he said.

The budget airline had also argued the merger partners agreement to minimise the negative effects on competition in 14 direct flights, was unfavourable to low-cost carriers and would not guarantee a competitive market. EasyJet has two months to appeal the decision.