The European Commission has launched a new probe into whether regional authorities break EU state aid rules by funding local airports used by Irish budget airline Ryanair, this time at Frankfurt's Hahn.
The Commission said on Tuesday it was checking public financing given to the airport by the Hessen and Rheinland-Pfalz regional authorities in Germany, as well as from publicly owned parent company Fraport.
"The Commission has also decided to scrutinise the airport charges applicable at Frankfurt Hahn as well as individual contracts the airport has concluded with the Irish airline Ryanair," it said in a statement.
The Commission has launched similar probes or received complaints from airlines that Ryanair was getting preferential, cheaper airport charges in several European countries in return for bringing travellers to boost sometimes depressed areas.
Ryanair slammed the EU investigation, accusing the Commission of repeatedly failing to take action against what it called abuses of state aid rules by national EU governments. "This investigation into the privately owned Hahn Airport ... makes it clear that DG Transport (Commission's transport department) has no intention of fairly enforcing the state aid rules by national governments to protect their flag carrier airlines," Ryanair's Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs Jim Callaghan said in a statement.
It cited Italy's loan to struggling airline Alitalia as an example.
Instead, the Commission was "misusing the state aid rules in a poltically motivated vendetta to block competition from low-fares airlines at low-cost regional and secondary airports like Frankfurt Hahn and Charleroi," the statement said.
The EU's competition watchdog has previously ordered Belgium's Wallonia region to recover illegal state aid granted to Ryanair's operations at Charleroi airport, south of Brussels.
The investigation into Frankfurt Hahn - not the German city's main airport but a remote former US military airfield converted to civilian use after the end of the Cold War - followed complaints from a competing airline and from an association of airlines, the Commission said.
"After an initial assessment of the evidence, the Commission has concluded that Flughafen Frankfurt Hahn GmbH might have acted like a private market investor, but that at this stage, there is insufficient evidence to show this beyond reasonable doubt," it said.
"The Commission's decision acknowledges the positive impact which the development of Frankfurt Hahn has had for the economy of the Hunsrueck region. This can be taken into account when assessing the compatibility of aid with the single market."
By William Schomberg, Reuters
