Ryanair Takes Legal Action After ?Obvious Abuse' of EU competition Rules

Ryanair is to take legal action over an alleged €1 billion of state aid given to Air France, whilst claiming the European Commission applies different rules for high-fare flag carriers compared to the low cost airlines. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said: "We are calling on the commission to start promoting competition and stop protecting flag carrier airlines who continue to receive unlawful state aid."

Ryanair, which specialised in offering no-frills cheap flights, have lodged a case in the European Court of First Instance and claims the European Commission has failed to act upon a complaint made 18 months ago about €1 billion worth of state air to Air France "in the form of unlawful reduced domestic airport charges" in France. A statement from Ryanair said that the “obvious abuse" of EU competition rules had failed to be dealt with by the EC, even 18 months after the complaint was originally submitted.

Michael O'Leary said: “They apply one rule to flag carriers by ignoring blatant state aid to Air France, Alitalia, Olympic, Lufthansa among others, while at the same time wasting time and money investigating baseless complaints from flag carrier airlines against open market commercial deals at regional and secondary airports.” O’Leary added that the commission had refused to act upon complaints of ‘serious violations’ of state aid rules by national governments to protect flag carrier airlines.

"The French government's operation of massively discounted domestic airport fees in France – almost all of which supports Air France – amounts to approximately €1 billion of illegal state aid to the benefit of Air France, yet the commission has refused to do anything about this for the last 18 months. The commission has previously outlawed differentiated domestic/intra EU airport charges in Finland, Portugal, the UK and Ireland, so why should France be any different?”.