EU: Lufthansa wins partial victory at EU court

The General Court of the European Union ordered that the European Commission must re-examine a request made by Lufthansa and Swiss airline concerning the waiver of their pricing commitments for the Zurich-Stockholm route.

However, the General Court dismissed Lufthansa’s action so far as the Zurich-Warsaw route is concerned.

In 2005 the Commission cleared, subject to conditions, the planned acquisition of Swiss airline by Lufthansa, a founding member of Star Alliance.

Those conditions included compliance with commitments on pricing given by Lufthansa and Swiss airline in respect of the Zurich-Stockholm and Zurich-Warsaw routes. Those commitments provided that the merged entity would apply, each time it reduced a published fare on a comparable reference route, an equivalent reduction to the corresponding fares on those two routes. It was stipulated that that obligation would cease once a new air service provider began operations on the routes concerned.

By those commitments Lufthansa and Swiss airline addressed the Commission’s concerns regarding competition on those two routes. First, those routes were operated only by Swiss and by Star Alliance partners and, secondly, Zurich and Stockholm airports were congested.

Full Content: Global Competition Review

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