Ryanair to appeal EU court rulings on French, Swedish state aid

Ryanair on Wednesday said it was appealing against a European court ruling in favour of state aid for rivals Air France and SAS.

The Irish airline said it would now take its case to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

“We hope that the Court of Justice will overturn the European Commission’s approvals of the French and Swedish schemes, to give airlines and consumers a glimmer of hope,” it said in a statement.

Ryanair earlier in the day lost its fight against government subsidies in a case before the Luxembourg-based General Court. It has launched 16 lawsuits against the commission for allowing state aid to individual airlines such as Lufthansa, KLM, Austrian Airlines and TAP, as well as national schemes that mainly benefit flag carriers.

As the pandemic hammered air travel, the European Commission eased rules to allow governments support airlines.

The General Court said the French and Swedish schemes were in line with the bloc’s rules and did “not constitute discrimination” the court said.

Ryanair argues that more than €30bn in “discriminatory state subsidies has been gifted to EU flag carriers”, which would distort EU aviation “for decades to come”.

It argued that the French and Swedish schemes were reserved for airlines registered in those countries “while excluding all other EU airlines, which were also damaged by Covid-19, despite their contribution to connectivity, jobs, traffic growth and the wider economy in France and Sweden”.

“One of the EU’s greatest achievements is the creation of a true single market for air transport, underpinned by the principle of a common EU airline licence – one for each airline. A nationality condition in a state aid scheme is plainly incompatible with the single market,” the airline said in a statement.

“Ryanair is a truly European airline. We have no rich and powerful ‘home country’ to subsidise us in times of trouble.”