On Friday, the European Commission approved 39.7 Million Euro of Italian aid to support the national airline Alitalia.
The Commission has found that the Italian aid measure of €39.7 million to support Alitalia is in line with EU State aid rules.
The aid aims at compensating the airline for damage on certain routes due to the coronavirus in the period from 1 March to 30 April 2021 and will be applied as a direct grant.
The Commission had recently approved two more packages for the Italian airline; 24.7 million euros in March and 12.8 million euros in May, due to covid-19 losses.
In April 2018, the European Commission launched an investigation into the €900 million loan granted to Alitalia by Italy in 2017. In February 2020, the Commission launched a separate investigation for an additional €400 million loan granted by Italy in October 2019. Both investigations are ongoing.
The EU Commission has been negotiating for a long time with the Italian government regarding the new airline (Italia Trasporto Aereo-ITA) to replace Alitalia.
The new airline was initially scheduled to start operations in April 2021. However, the plan was delayed due to negotiations between the Italian government and the EU Commission.
