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Ryanair loses Air France, SAS state-aid cases; to appeal

Ryanair (FR, Dublin Int'l) will appeal against two rulings issued on February 17 at the General Court of the European Union, the second-highest court in Europe, in which state aid for Air France (AF, Paris CDG) and SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup) was judged not to have broken state aid rules.

The low-cost carrier will now take its fight against subsidies for airlines - in these cases a French airport tax deferral and a Swedish loan guarantee - to the supreme court, the European Court of Justice, it protested in a statement.

The measures were introduced at the beginning of the current crisis “with nationality conditions,” Ryanair argued, the French scheme being reserved for French-registered airlines, the Swedish scheme for Swedish-registered carriers.

This excluded “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,” Ryanair said. It launched cases against the European Commission’s approvals of the schemes in May 2020.

“One of...

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