EU commission sided with the airlines over luggage fees
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk.
What decision did the EU commission make regarding airlines and luggage fees?
Last week, the European Commission sided with the airlines when it said that Spain was wrong to fine airlines for charging customers to take their bags onto the plane. It could force Madrid to repay up to 200 million euros to the airlines, including our own Ryanair, and end up in the European Court of Justice. Consumer groups aren't so happy about it and want more clarity from the commission. Augustin Reyna is the Director General of the European Consumer Advocate Group, BEOC, and is on the line. Good morning, Augustin. Good morning. Now, Augustin, can you tell us more about what the Spanish government did regarding cabin bags?
So the Spanish government, they fined these low-cost companies for charging consumers when they bring a personal item and hand luggage with them. The Spanish law states Basically, what they say is that these items are included in the price of the ticket. And the European Commission does not agree with these national provisions, neither with the interpretation that the Spanish authorities have given to the case law of the Court of Justice. And they consider that Spain infringed European legislation. And this is a question that, of course, we do not fully agree with, because what the Court of Justice has said is that consumers can bring for free, because it's including the price of the ticket, an item, a luggage of a reasonable size on board.
And there is with this unclearity where local companies are basically taking advantage and charging consumers for something that they should not pay for.
Now, of course, it's different for most of Europe. You do pay for the privilege of taking your small handheld luggage onto the plane. Is Spain the exception?
The Spanish law, indeed, it indicates that it cannot be charged any fee to bring something on board. But what we did at the European level, we also started or introduced a complaint before the European Commission that went to every single national authority. And in this regard, we have, for example, Poland that also opened proceedings to investigate this practice. So regardless whether you could eventually be charged for another item, the question that needs to be addressed is whether a hand luggage is a luggage of a reasonable size. That is included in the price of the tickets. And that's why we found that the Commission doing this action now is extremely premature and unnecessary because there are investigations ongoing and because, sooner or later, the Court of Justice of the European Union will have to give its views about what rationally means.
Yes, this is very important. So it should end up in the European Court of Justice and that will decide. And if it agrees with the Spanish government, it could make flying that little bit cheaper for everyone. Unless, of course, the airlines decide to put up tickets across the board.
Yeah, that is, of course, an economic question that relates to what is the cost for an airline to bring a hand luggage or to include the hand luggage in the price. And obviously, what we have seen is that this does not entail additional cost for airlines. And in addition, when we look at the levels of consumer satisfaction across Europe, we know that this is a serious problem. Just to give you an example, yesterday, only yesterday, the European Parliament adopted its position in relation to this point where they indicated that the passengers should be able to bring a personal item like a purse or a laptop bag and a hand luggage. as included in the price, so it cannot be charged extra. And the parliament has already defined that these hand luggages cannot be, in this case, more than seven kilos and the total dimension more than a meter.
So on top of these procedures that are ongoing in relation to Spain, we have also the European legislator indicating that here there is something that needs to be done to address consumer frustration across Europe.
It's pretty rare that the big airlines, including Ryanair from Ireland and the European Commission, are in agreement.
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