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    • Review of air rules

    The Commission is to review the rules on state aid for the aviation sector.

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    After a number of complaints about state aid given to regional airports – including some legal cases like the one in which the Irish airline Ryanair was judged to have been given illegal subsidies for using Charleroi airport in Belgium – the Commission has launched a rethink of the current situation. It wants to hear about recent financing models for airports and airlines, and will make a statement after 6 June.

    T&E project officer Bill Hemmings has accused the chief executive of the newly merged United and Continental Airlines of rejecting ‘the deal of the century’. In a letter to the Financial Times newspaper, Hemmings says the cost of the aviation sector joining the EU’s emissions trading scheme from next year is 40 times less per litre than the 48 cents tax road transport pays, on average, for petrol and diesel in the EU.