Ryanair brought proceedings under Article 263 TFEU. It sought annulment of Commission Decision C(2024) 2339 final of 15 April 2024. That decision cleared the extension and amendment of an Italian aid scheme for airlines hit by the pandemic.
Ryanair raised five pleas. These covered freedom to provide services, freedom of establishment, the Rome I Regulation, Article 107(2)(b) TFEU, procedural rights and a failure to state reasons. The Court examined the merits directly, without ruling on admissibility. It rejected every plea and dismissed the action.
Italy created a EUR 130 million fund in 2020 to compensate airlines for pandemic losses. The scheme targeted damage suffered between 1 March and 15 June 2020. Eligible airlines needed a valid operator's certificate, an Italian licence, aircraft with more than 19 seats, and a minimum wage commitment for Italy-based staff.
The Commission first cleared the scheme in December 2020. Three airlines qualified: Blue Panorama, Air Dolomiti and Neos. An extension followed in August 2021.
Ryanair challenged the original clearance. The General Court annulled it in May 2023, citing weak reasoning on the wage requirement. The Commission issued an amended decision in March 2024. The Court of Justice later set aside that 2023 judgment, in January 2025.
Meanwhile, Italy notified a further extension in October 2023. This covered damage from January to December 2021, added EUR 100 million to the budget, and adjusted the aid calculation. The eligibility conditions, including the wage rule, stayed the same. The Commission cleared this amended scheme in April 2024, prompting Ryanair's fresh challenge.
Ryanair argued the Commission wrongly cleared the amended scheme without objection. Its central target was the minimum remuneration requirement. This obliged beneficiary airlines to pay Italy-based staff no less than the applicable national collective agreement rate.
Ryanair said this rule breached the freedom to provide services, the freedom of establishment, and Article 8 of the Rome I Regulation. It also argued the Commission never properly assessed whether the rule was justified.
Separately, Ryanair attacked the Commission's compatibility assessment under Article 107(2)(b) TFEU. It alleged manifest errors on causation and proportionality, and said the Commission ignored Blue Panorama's pre-existing financial troubles and separate Lufthansa Group aid benefiting Air Dolomiti.
On free movement, the Court found Ryanair had not shown how the wage rule burdened cross-border service provision. The rule applied only to staff based in Italy, not posted workers. Following the Court of Justice's ruling in Neos, the Commission had no duty to conduct an in-depth justification analysis. The establishment-freedom argument failed for the same reasons.
On Rome I, Ryanair failed to explain how the rule restricted choice of applicable law or stripped employees of Article 8 protection. The Court found no demonstrated risk of infringement.
On State aid compatibility, the Court stressed this was a scheme, not individual aid. The Commission therefore had no obligation to examine Blue Panorama's specific situation or cumulation risks for Air Dolomiti. The methodology already excluded insolvency-related costs, and Ryanair identified no specific expenditure wrongly included. The Court pointed to safeguards: reporting duties and an ex post recovery mechanism. It rejected reliance on the TWD principle, since the Lufthansa recapitalisation aid had never been declared incompatible. Retention rate methodology properly excluded passengers who would not have travelled anyway.
On procedural rights, Ryanair simply repeated earlier arguments without showing serious difficulties in the Commission's assessment. On reasoning, the Court found the decision adequate under Article 296 TFEU, allowing effective judicial review.
The General Court dismissed the action entirely. Ryanair must bear its own costs and pay those of the Commission, Neos and Air Dolomiti.
EXPECTED OR CONTROVERSIAL?
This outcome was largely predictable. The Court of Justice had already settled the wage-requirement question in Neos, months before this judgment. The General Court simply applied that precedent. Ryanair's free movement and Rome I arguments faced an uphill battle from the outset.
The more interesting finding concerns aid schemes versus individual aid. The Court confirmed that scheme-level clearance does not require beneficiary-by-beneficiary scrutiny. This reduces the Commission's evidentiary burden significantly. Competitors challenging scheme clearances face a correspondingly higher bar.
Airline groups operating across the EU should note the scheme-versus-individual-aid distinction. A multinational cannot force scrutiny of a rival's specific financial history simply by pointing to broader group aid elsewhere. Lufthansa's other State aid did not taint Air Dolomiti's eligibility here.
Groups with cross-border workforces should also watch home-base wage rules. The Court confirmed these rules, tied to where staff are actually based, do not automatically restrict service freedom or breach Rome I protections. Employment structuring around "home base" concepts needs careful documentation.
State aid authorities gain useful confirmation here. Preliminary examination, rather than formal investigation, remains sufficient where no serious difficulties are shown. Authorities need not chase every competitor grievance about cumulation or pre-existing financial distress within a scheme-based clearance.
The reporting and ex post recovery safeguards mentioned by the Court also matter. Authorities designing compensation schemes can rely on such mechanisms to guard against overcompensation, rather than building bespoke individual assessments into scheme design from the outset.
Ryanair DAC v Commission (T‑268/21), General Court, 24 May 2023: annulled the original clearance decision for inadequate reasoning on the wage requirement. That gap was later cured, feeding directly into this case's background.
Neos SpA v Ryanair DAC and Commission (C‑490/23 P), Court of Justice, 23 January 2025: set aside the 2023 General Court judgment and confirmed the Commission need not conduct in-depth justification review of the wage requirement. The General Court expressly followed this holding here.
TWD Textilwerke Deggendorf v Commission: cited by Ryanair on cumulation risk, but distinguished because the Lufthansa recapitalisation aid was never declared incompatible or ordered recovered.
Airlines and groups affected by State aid schemes should engage EU State aid and employment law specialists before litigation, not after. Ryanair's five pleas relied heavily on arguments the Court of Justice had already rejected in Neos, a point specialist counsel would have flagged early.
Tax and legal risk functions should map how national compensation schemes classify aid, as a scheme or as individual measures. That classification, confirmed decisive here, changes what evidence a challenger needs and what defences a beneficiary can raise.
Groups with cross-border aviation or logistics operations should audit home-base employment terms against Rome I obligations proactively. Waiting for a challenger to litigate wage-parity rules, as Ryanair did, wastes resources on arguments EU courts have already settled.
A tax and State aid steering committee adds real value in cases like this. Such a committee would track parallel proceedings, like the T‑268/21 annulment and the C‑490/23 P appeal, and adjust litigation strategy once the Court of Justice ruling emerged, rather than pressing settled points to a second defeat.