Ryanair Holdings Plc lost three more court challenges to Covid-19 bailouts for rival carriers after a European Union court said support for Finnair Oyj and SAS AB didn’t break the bloc’s state-aid rules.
In two cases concerning SAS, the EU General Court ruled Wednesday that Swedish and Danish aid “does not amount to unlawful discrimination.” In a third case, the judges said a 600 million-euro ($718 million) loan guarantee for Finnair is also in line with EU law.
The company lost its first two cases in February, when EU judges ruled that French and Swedish state support was appropriate for tackling serious disturbances to the countries’ economies caused by the pandemic. Ryanair has argued that French and Swedish programs mainly benefited Air France-KLM and SAS. It’s appealing the decisions at the EU’s top court.
Ryanair has said that the EU’s competition regulator isn’t living up to its task of ensuring governments don’t unfairly help a favored company at the expense of others. The European Commission has been under pressure to approve unprecedented state aid to save the pandemic-struck European economy.
Ryanair said it will appeal the decisions to the EU’s top court “to overturn these unfair subsidies in the interests of competition and consumers.”
“The European Commission’s approvals of the Finnish, Danish and Swedish state aid went against the fundamental principles of EU law,” Ryanair said in an emailed statement. Subsidies “encourage inefficiency and will harm consumers for decades.”
The court on Wednesday said the commission didn’t make a mistake “solely because the aid measures for SAS did not benefit all of the victims of the damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The cases are: T-378/20, T-379/20, T-388/20, Ryanair v. Commission.