By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Ryanair on Thursday lost a court battle against a 10-billion euro ($11 billion) Spanish solvency scheme for pandemic-hit companies approved by EU competition enforcers four years ago, one of a number of lawsuits the company has launched against rivals benefiting from state aid.
The European Commission gave the green light to the scheme in 2020, saying it was compatible with EU rules.
During the pandemic, it cleared billions of euros in state aid to COVID-hit airlines across the bloc as well as companies in other sectors.
Ryanair had challenged the Spanish scheme at a lower tribunal but lost in 2021, prompting the company to appeal to the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), Europe’s highest.
CJEU judges dismissed Ryanair’s arguments.
“The Court upholds the (European) Commission’s decision authorising the solvency support fund for strategic Spanish undertakings,” the Court ruled.
“The exceptional nature and the particular weight of the objectives pursued by that aid scheme permit the inference that a fair balance was struck between its beneficial effects and its adverse effects on the internal market, with the result that it is in the common interest of the European Union.”
Ryanair said it took note of the ruling and said the EU competition watchdog had yet to recover state aid granted to its rivals during the pandemic.
This state aid was rejected by the lower tribunal also known as the General Court, the company said.
“In other cases concerning Covid-19 state aid, the EU General Court ruled that billions of euros in aid received by Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, SAS, and certain Italian airlines were unlawful,” Ryanair said in an email.
“The European Commission has still not ordered recovery of the unlawful aid, nor has it imposed any measures to remedy the damage to competition caused by the French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, and Italian governments favouring their legacy flag carrier airlines over other EU airlines, in breach of EU law,” it said.
The judgment is final and cannot be appealed.
Ryanair has won a number of its challenges and lost others.
The case is C-441/21 P | Ryanair v Commission.
($1 = 0.9190 euros)
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, additional reporting by Conor Humphries in Dublin; editing by Jane Merriman)
