What Vestager, Giorgetti and Turicchi really said to each other about Ita-Lufthansa
Facts, names, rumors and insights on the Ita-Lufthansa dossier
Lufthansa plans to join ITA by the summer of this year. This is what emerges from the press conference of the Lufthansa group on the eve of the presentation of the quarterly report which sees the German group with an operating loss of 849 million euros, a negative which is mainly ascribed to the strikes which characterized the period in question and which cost approximately 350 million euros to the group.
During the press conference there were also many questions about the marriage with Ita Airways. In fact, when asked by the Corriere della Sera journalist whether there is a sort of "plan B" in the event of a negative outcome from the EU Antitrust, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr replied that the group sticks to "plan A". Spohr then went on to say that Lufthansa can live without Ita, but the question is whether Ita can live without Lufthansa. According to Spohr, in fact more and more people think "no" and this is why investment in ITA finds more and more support not only in Italy, but also in Brussels and other parts of Europe.
Spohr then specified that the Italian airline needs a future, it deserves a future and that future is the plan that involves the integration of Ita into Lufthansa. The CEO of Lufthansa then wanted to point out a concept: this investment by the group in ITA does not only concern ITA itself, it also concerns the Italian economy which is the third largest economy in Europe and needs to have its connectivity with the rest of the world. And then Italian consumers need to be able to choose, both on short-haul flights where there is currently a dominant low-cost airline (Ryanair), and on long-haul ones.
On the North Atlantic, for example, we don't want Italians to depend only on US carriers, we want them to also have the possibility of choosing an Italian carrier, which Ita will provide with the support of the Lufthansa group. The EU green light was postponed by a week, from 6 to 13 June after Minister Giorgetti and I were in Brussels on two different days, underlined the CEO. We hope to get the approval as expected in the summer.
And it is precisely on the meeting between Minister Giorgetti and Margrethe Vestager, head of the European Antitrust, that the spotlight came on. In fact, the meeting which took place last April 25th would not have taken place in the serene and constructive climate described by the various press releases which anticipated the event, and it was understood even before Giorgetti accompanied by the executive president of Ita, Antonino Turicchi, crossed the doors of the EU offices in Brussels.
Those who are aware of what really happened within the walls of the DG Comp offices, in the days immediately following the meeting, were saying that there was so much tension between Giorgetti and Vestager, and that in all likelihood there was no there will be other conversations. After the press release from the Mef, which spoke of a cordial meeting between the head of the finance ministry and the head of the European Antitrust, the bloggers of the web went wild, and the words "storm", "rebounded", "mocked" etc., etc., are often echoed in the posts on the web that have commented on the meeting between the two senior officials.
But what would have really happened in an hour of conversation that would make Vestager and Giorgetti so nervous that they would end up at loggerheads?
Let's start by underlining the ministerial protocol error in having the minister accompanied by Turicchi. Institutional meetings usually require face to face, the presence of Turicchi, not directly involved in the privatization process, could have irritated Vestager quite a bit.
Turicchi's presence therefore may have reflected a strategy aimed at conveying the message that Ita would not be so influential as to have to suspend long-haul routes following the merger with Lufthansa. However, it seems that the strategy of dividing the dossier into two parts, with separate remedies for ITA and Lufthansa, has sparked the wrath of Vestager, who totally rejected the idea.
And precisely this point would have led to a heated confrontation between Giorgetti and Vestager, with the Italian minister criticizing the European Commission for not having been sufficiently accommodating towards Italy.
But behind the scenes there would be much more. Some ITA executives believe the price offered by Lufthansa for ITA is paltry, and fear they will be wiped out once the German giant takes control. These internal tensions may have influenced the strategy of both the MEF but also that of Turicchi himself.
Politics also played its role. While Prime Minister Meloni supported the operation without ifs or buts, some managers of both ITA and the various ministries involved would have sided against the marriage with the Germans, arguing that the agreement with Lufthansa should be reviewed. The position of Turicchi and a good part of the offices following the dossier, therefore, would be to lead Lufthansa to immediately invest a share below 20%, bypassing the European Commission, in short, a sort of SAS-style operation, and to maintain management intact, which in this case could not pass to the Germans. An issue that Lufthansa has already dismissed as not actionable.
The ball is now back in the hands of Mef and Lufthansa who will have to send the final package of remedies to Brussels within a few days, which has moved its final decision to 13 June 2024. But time is running out, and haste could further compromise the situation. In fact, it would take much more time than the canonical 5 working days granted to the parties to draft such a delicate document, the last one that the Commission will receive on the Ita-Lufthansa dossier and therefore even if they had to commit two more weeks of work to draft this document, at the point we have reached, and given the stakes, a few days of elasticity would not change the problem much. It is better to take more time to evaluate all the available options and draft a technical (less political) document that can somehow defuse the commission's doubts once and for all, rather than send a document that could leave room for interpretations of any kind.
And it seems that Giorgetti is also trying to defuse tensions, recognizing that dialogue with the Commission is essential. And perhaps this is precisely the lesson to be learned: a calmer and more collaborative approach could be the key to unlocking this delicate situation. And at this juncture the Germans must be given credit for having been more careful and cautious, they have in fact always tried not to irritate the Commission and to keep the doors open to dialogue, a sign that most likely the experience gathered by the Germans in all these years , beyond the positions taken by the commission on the dossier (right or wrong), should make everyone think and reflect a little on the correct ways of approaching this operation towards the European authorities who will have to give the green light to the merger between Ita and Lufthansa.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/che-cosa-si-sono-detti-davvero-vestager-giorgetti-e-turicchi-su-ita-lufthansa/ on Tue, 30 Apr 2024 13:02:32 +0000.