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Europe to harden concession rules for airline mergers

As the European Commission confronts a wave of consolidation in the airline industry following a lull during the pandemic, regulators are planning to demand tougher concessions from carriers seeking to merge so that fair competition is ensured, interim EU antitrust chief Didier Reynders has told the Financial Times.

There is evidence that existing concessions forced on airlines conducting mergers, such as giving airport take-off and landing slots to rivals, have not always proceeded as planned, with some slots remaining unused or not used on the routes intended.

In future, Brussels will ask airlines to ensure that the slots are allocated correctly and, in some cases, it could tell them to divest non-core assets.

Belgian national Reynders, who was previously the European commissioner for justice, was appointed caretaker competition commissioner last month while Margrethe Vestager runs for president of the European Investment Bank.

He told the newspaper: “We see some remedies are not efficient. In the past, the main request was to ask [airlines to offer] slots to other companies.” But if this is “not enough”, regulators...