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Worried by the repeated strikes of French air traffic controllers, four European companies announced Tuesday that they had lodged a complaint with the European Union.
By dint of a strike, the French air traffic controllers have attracted the wrath of the companies European airports. Four of them decided to lodge a complaint against France to the European Union, saying in a joint statement released on Tuesday that the restrictions on flying over the territory during a strike constituted a violation of the principle of freedom of movement. inside the Union. The British IAG and easyJet, the Irish Ryanair and the Hungarian Wizz Air consider that France does not respect the European law by forbidding the planes to fly over its territory during the strikes of controllers.
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France is indeed the European champion of the air traffic controllers' strike. When the latter do not officiate, the national flights as well as those who simply fly over the territory are paralyzed. It is this last point that anger the airlines, as Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary deplores: "When there are air traffic controller strikes in Greece and Italy, the flights over the country take place normally. Why is France not doing the same? ", He wonders. Willie Walsh, Managing Director of IAG (British Airways & Iberia), agrees with AFP: "It is not only customers departing or arriving in France who are affected during the strikes of French air traffic controllers. Pbadengers on lines crossing France, especially the airspace above Marseilles and the Mediterranean are also subject to significant delays and disturbances. "
French air traffic controllers at the heart of the problem
Sans to go as far as challenging the right to strike, the carriers point out that these strikes were four times more frequent in France in the last three months than last year at the same time. Ryanair, in its last quarterly report, published the day before, considers the chapter "air control" the French as the "worst nuisance" in the sector: strikes on 9 of the 13 weekends of April, May and June 2018 have led to "thousands of canceled flights" for the only Irish company.
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In their statement, the four companies advance two overwhelming figures: 16,000 flights would have disrupted in the first half of these strikes according to Eurocontrol, the European body ensuring the safety of air traffic, for 2 million pbadengers affected. They also rely on the recent Senate report involving France in a third of the airborne delays in Europe. These airlines hope to win the same claim as Spain, which in 1997 had attacked France for obstruction of its exports of fruit and vegetables in the EU, violating the principle of free movement in force in the EU.
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For its part Ryanair, which judges" unacceptable "the frequency with which the skies French are closed, indicates in its report of Monday to have initiated with Airlines for Europe (an badociation defending the interests of major European airlines) a procedure to ensure that it is an organ of the European Commission that takes control of high-altitude airspace on the continent, to compensate for deficiencies at national level.
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