The European Union’s General Court of Justice has annulled the French state aid package provided to Air France in 2020 and 2021. In a complaint filed by Ryanair and its subsidiary Malta Air, the General Court said on Wednesday that it can’t be ruled out that not just Air France, but also KLM and the holding Air France-KLM have benefitted from the French aid under the EU Temporary Framework. The European Commission can appeal today’s ruling.
In April 2020, weeks after the first wave of Covid paralyzed the airline industry, the French government announced that it would guarantee 90 percent of a €4.0 billion loan that was provided by a consortium of banks, plus €3.0 billion as a shareholder loan. At the time, the French State owned 14.3 percent of Air France. The package was approved by the European Commission in May, as it qualified for the Temporary Framework for state aid measures to support companies during the pandemic.
Active as a journalist since 1987, with a background in newspapers, magazines, and a regional news station, Richard has been covering commercial aviation on a freelance basis since late 2016.
Richard is contributing to AirInsight since December 2018. He also writes for Airliner World, Aviation News, Piloot & Vliegtuig, and Luchtvaartnieuws Magazine. Twitter: @rschuur_aero.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
