Ryanair loses fight over Spain’s €10 billion Covid aid

The European Union’s competition enforcers were right to approve a €10 billion ($10.9 billion) Spanish bailout fund to support companies hit by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a judgment from the EU’s top court. 

Thursday’s decision — a defeat for Ryanair Holdings Plc — is a boost for the European Commission as it fends off a raft of other legal challenges to its approval of billions of euros in national subsidies under a loosened state aid regime. 

The EU Court of Justice confirmed that the aid “did not breach the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of nationality and that it was proportionate.” 

Ryanair — Europe’s biggest discount airline — has filed more than two dozen challenges over the billions of state aid doled out by EU nations to carriers — winning cases in the bloc’s lower court over subsidies for the likes of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Air France-KLM. 

The firm has argued that the measures shouldn’t have been waved through by the EU because they distorted competition in the industry.

Ryanair said it took note of Thursday’s ruling but complained that regulators have so far failed to order recovery of aid deemed unlawful in other cases.