Statement re: Sues EU Comm...

Ryanair Holdings PLC
08 November 2007



  RYANAIR SUES EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR ITS FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE €1BILLION OF
                            STATE AID TO AIR FRANCE


Ryanair, Europe's favourite low fares airline, today, (Thursday, 8th November
2007), (exactly 18 months after its original complaint), lodged a case in the
European Court of First Instance against the European Commission's failure to
act on Ryanair's complaint about €1 billion worth of State to Air France in the
form of unlawful reduced domestic airport charges in France. Ryanair has called
on the Commission several times to investigate this obvious abuse of EU
competition rules, but the Commission has repeatedly failed to do so.

Announcing the launch of these proceedings Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's CEO, said:

        'This is just another example of the Commission's uneven-handed
        application of the State aid rules. They apply one rule to flag carriers
        by ignoring blatant State aid to Air France, Alitalia, Olympic,
        Lufthansa among others, while at the same time wasting time and money
        investigating baseless complaints from flag carrier airlines against
        open market commercial deals at regional and secondary airports. Recent
        examples of this include investigations at Tampere airport in Finland
        and Alghero airport in Sardinia. These complaints were filed by flag
        carrier airlines operating at expensive hub airports, who would never
        fly to smaller airports and are only trying to prevent competition and
        consumer choice.

        'On the other hand, the Commission refuses to act on legitimate
        complaints against serious violations of the State aid rules by National
        Governments to protect their flag carrier airlines. The French
        Government's operation of massively discounted domestic airport fees in
        France - almost all of which supports Air France - amounts to
        approximately €1bn of illegal State aid to the benefit of Air France,
        yet the Commission has refused to do anything about this for the last 18
        months! The Commission has previously outlawed differentiated domestic/
        intra EU airport charges in Finland, Portugal, the UK and Ireland, so
        why should France be any different?

        'It appears that the Commission applies different rules for the high
        fare flag carrier airlines compared to low fares airlines. We are
        calling on the Commission to start promoting competition and stop
        protecting flag carrier airlines who continue to receive unlawful State
        aid.'

Ends.                                Thursday, 8th November 2007

For further information:

Peter Sherrard - Ryanair           Pauline McAlester - Murray Consultants

Tel: [phone]              Tel: [phone]




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