Ryanair has lost its appeal against pandemic state aid to Austrian Airlines, granted during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
A lower tribunal in 2021 upheld the EU competition enforcer’s 2020 decision, prompting Ryanair to appeal to the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union.
Ryanair has launched more than 20 lawsuits against EU for approving state aid to airlines
CJEU judges dismissed the appeal, ruling the loan was lawful: “The Court of Justice confirms the lawfulness of the subordinated loan of 150m euros granted by Austria to Austrian Airlines in the summer of 2020. A member state may, for objective reasons, reserve to a single undertaking aid that is intended to make good the damage caused by an exceptional occurrence.”
Ryanair said in a written statement: “Ryanair today (29 Jul) noted the EU Court of Justice’s judgment on Austrian State aid favouring Lufthansa-owned Austrian Airlines over other EU airlines. In other cases concerning Covid-19 State aid, the EU General Court ruled that billions of euros in aid received by Lufthansa, Air France, KLM, SAS, and certain Italian airlines were unlawful. The European Commission’s Directorate General for Competition has still not recovered the unlawful aid, nor has it imposed any measures to remedy the damage to competition caused by the German, French, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Italian governments favouring their local airlines over other EU airlines, in breach of EU law.
