By Francesca Landini
MILAN, April 13 (Reuters) – Alitalia commerce union representatives on Tuesday urged Italy’s authorities to desert negotiations with Brussels over the airline’s revamp, saying the European Fee is favouring overseas carriers over the group.
Rome has been in negotiations with the European Union’s govt arm for months over Italy’s plan to restructure the airline via the launch of a brand new, state-owned firm referred to as ITA.
Talking earlier than the Italian parliament, the top of the UILT commerce union Claudio Tarlazzi rejected the concept the brand new firm may settle for any of the EU’s proposals for the restructuring.
“We should realise that the EU is favouring rival corporations, and negotiations (with Brussels) should be stopped and the corporate created with all the required belongings,” Tarlazzi instructed the members of two parliamentary committees holding a joint listening to.
Criticism over the EU’s dealing with of Alitalia peaked final week, when Brussels authorised France’s contribution to a Four billion euro ($4.eight billion) help package deal for Air France-KLM AIRF.PA in return for a 4% discount in its take-off and touchdown slots at Paris-Orly airport.
A Fee spokeswoman mentioned looser guidelines for state support adopted in the course of the pandemic via the EU’s “momentary framework” couldn’t be utilized to Alitalia.
“Alitalia has been persistently loss-making and was in issue already on the finish of 2019, earlier than the COVID-19 outbreak, and thus it’s excluded from… receiving support on the idea of the momentary framework”, the spokeswoman instructed Reuters.
“Against this, Air France and Lufthansa weren’t in issue on the finish of 2019, which is why they might be recapitalised.”
The Fee is in touch with the Italian authorities, she added, with out elaborating.
The EU has requested for ITA to drop the Alitalia model, hand over as many as half of its slots at Milan metropolis airport, and begin with out the dealing with and upkeep divisions of the outdated provider, sources have mentioned.
ITA’s administration had deliberate to hunt partnerships with rival carriers utilizing the negotiating energy of Alitalia’s Milan-Linate airport slots as a sweetener.
It had been supposed to purchase a few of belongings of the outdated Alitalia utilizing a part of three billion euros injected by the federal government, and to start out flying with lower than 50 jets in June.
Representatives of three different commerce unions attending the listening to agreed with Tarlazzi and mentioned ITA ought to begin with double the deliberate fleet.
Alitalia has posted an working loss yearly since 2012, and greater than half of its 11,000 workers have been put beneath momentary layoff scheme due to the coronavirus disaster.
($1 = 0.8409 euros)
(Further reporting by Foo Yun Chee in Brussels; Modifying by Jan Harvey)
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