Vestager applies antitrust only when Italy is involved: the ITA Lufthansa case
The EU Commission continues to have reservations about Lufthansa's planned acquisition of a stake in the Italian airline Ita. It currently considers that the planned operation may limit competition on some routes to and from Italy, the Commission announced.
The authority fears that customers may suffer increased prices or lower quality of service after the acquisition. This means that the multi-million euro project cannot be finalized for the time being.
The EU competition authorities had already expressed similar concerns at the end of January, which Lufthansa was obviously unable to dispel. At the time, it was stated that Lufthansa and Ita were in direct competition with each other with non-stop flights on some routes between Italy and Central European countries. Competition from other airlines was limited. Lufthansa had already made concessions in the EU antitrust case, but refused to provide details.
So the European Commission, which allowed Lufthansa's purchase of Austrian, Brussels Air, SWISS, Air Dolomiti without saying anything, now has problems with the absorption of a relatively small company, with only 14 million passengers expected for 2024, and which has already been penalized by the Commission itself, which limited its recapitalization by the Italian state. All to protect the Linate Krakow or Bologna Lodz lines, which are perhaps already served by one of the largest airlines in the world, Ryanair, which has grown precisely with the complacency of the Commission to an almost monopolistic size.
By the way, also with ITA; Lufthansa would not have significant weight on a global level, enough to be able to speak of a "Monopoly"
Strange that the Commission never has anything to say about Ryanain, which instead acts in a practically monopolistic manner on many lines and which can truly punish consumers with its own pricing policy.
Evidently for the Commission there are Sons and Stepsons, without considering that, on a global level, Lufthansa is far from the big Americans.
The feeling is that the problem is Italy and that the antitrust is specifically against us. The MEPs Marco Zanni, Antonio Maria Rinaldi and Valentino Grant also noted this: “ Unfortunately, Commissioner Vestager's statements, with specious reasons against the Ita-Lufthansa operation, do not surprise us. It is worth remembering that in 2015, when you were at the helm of the EU Antitrust, with an excessively restrictive interpretation you were responsible for the rejection of the intervention of the interbank fund to protect deposits for the rescue of Banca Tercas and, consequently, also of Banca Etruria, Banca Marche, CariChieti and CariFerrara which ended up in liquidation. The League presented several questions in this regard. And Vestager's position was sensationally denied in 2021 by the EU Court of Justice, which judged the intervention that she prevented was legitimate. Today as then, against Italy: we do not accept any lessons from her."
Luckily we are at the end of our mandate and in three months Vestager will go off to do damage somewhere else.
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The Vestager article applies antitrust only when Italy is involved: the ITA Lufthansa case comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/vestager-applica-lantitrust-solo-quando-ce-di-mezzo-litalia-il-caso-ita-lufthansa/ on Tue, 26 Mar 2024 14:01:44 +0000.