LET ALITALIA/OLYMPIC AIRWAYS GO BUST!

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Ryanair News
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News Release--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

23.09.08
Ryanair Calls on European Commission to do Something Positive

FOR THE ENVIRONMENT:

LET ALITALIA/OLYMPIC AIRWAYS GO BUST!

Ryanair, Europe’s Greenest Airline, today (23rd Sept) called on the European Commission to abandon its damaging plans to include aviation in the European Emission’s Trading Scheme (ETS) and actually do something positive – let grossly inefficient and polluting airlines like Alitalia and Olympic Airways go out of business instead of allowing governments to continuously prop them up through billions in illegal State aid.
Ryanair also called on the Commission to take urgent action to address the chronically inefficient Air Traffic Control system in Europe, which accounts for 12% of aviation emissions.
Speaking today at the World Low Cost Airlines Congress 2008, Ryanair’s Director of Legal and Regulatory Affairs, Jim Callaghan, said:

“The Commission’s proposals for including aviation in ETS will do nothing for the environment and in fact will damage it as it punishes the most efficient airlines while protecting the most inefficient, like Alitalia and Olympic Airways. This is unsurprising given the Commission’s ongoing policy of rubber stamping billions of Euros in State aid to failing national airlines.
If the Commission was serious about doing something for the environment, it would start actually enforcing the State aid rules and let these inefficient, polluting airlines go out of business. Transferring these passengers to efficient airlines like Ryanair would roughly halve existing airline emissions.
We are therefore again calling on the European Commission to stop approving illegal State aid to the likes of Alitalia and Olympic Airways and do the environment a favour!”.