Ryanair to take legal action against Commission

RYANAIR is to take legal action against the European Commission for not investigating its claims that other airlines are receiving billions of euro in illegal state aid.

Ryanair, which had its bid for Aer Lingus blocked by the commission last month, said it submitted a complaint to the commission last year alleging that Air France, Lufthansa, Alitalia and Greek airline Olympic were in receipt of payments from their respective governments amounting to hundreds of millions of euro.

In the case of Air France, Ryanair claims the French government has providing the carrier with discounted airport fees over the last seven years.

It also says the German government has allowed state-owned Munich Airport to rack up losses of over €50 million on a new terminal built exclusively for Lufthansa. Ryanair said the losses subsidy to Lufthansa as it is the only occupant of the terminal.

Ryanair’s head of regulatory affairs, Jim Callaghan, added that Italian and Greek governments have repeatedly given cash to Alitalia and Olympic.

“The commission has rubber stamped multi-billion bailout packages for Alitalia and the Italian government is currently planning to write off hundreds of millions in losses at the national airline in order to make it attractive for sale.

“Meanwhile, the European Commission blocked Ryanair from taking over the small, lossmaking regional Irish airline Aer Lingus. Moreover, the Greek government has never repaid the multi-millions in illegal state aid granted to Olympic,” Mr Callaghan said.

A commission spokesman said: “As yet Ryanair’s announced application to the European Courts has not been communicated to the commission. We will obviously study it carefully, once we have received it.

“We believe that the commission has been dealing with the cases mentioned by Mr Callaghan both fairly and effectively, in accordance with its duties. We are confident that, when reviewing our action, the court will confirm this.”

Ryanair’s move yesterday was followed by an announcement from the commission that it would be investigating several airports to see if their recent agreements with airlines breach EU state aid regulations.

These include Berlin Schönefeld, Lübeck and Tampere, which are all used by Ryanair. The commission said these airports are offering some airlines more favourable charges, which go against EU regulations.