The European Commission has threatened to take Spain to the European Court of Justice over its hand luggage ruling.
Last year, Spain’s Ministry for Consumer Affairs sanctioned five budget airlines: Ryanair, Vueling, Easyjet, Norwegian and Volotea for charging extra for hand luggage.
Ireland’s Ryanair received by far the biggest fine of €107,775,777. An appeal by the Irish airline is currently being considered in the Spanish courts.
Now the European Commission has said that the Spanish government’s actions are contrary to EU law.
“Spain’s national Air Navigation Law does not allow airlines to subject the carriage of any hand luggage to an additional charge”, the European Commission said. The is “restricting airlines’ freedom to set prices.”
The European Court of Justice previously ruled that “hand baggage should in principle be free of charge as long as it meets reasonable requirements in terms of weight and dimensions”.
But the European Commission says Spain is misinterpreting that ruling.
The fining of five airlines is an infringement of EU common rules for the operation of air services, the European Commission claims.
Agustín Reyna, from the European consumer organisation, BEUC, said the EU should sympathise with passengers.
“Seeing the [European] Commission taking sides with airlines is disappointing for consumers, who expect their hand-luggage to be included in their flight ticket price. Those surcharges pushed us to ask for an EU-wide investigation into airlines’ hand-luggage unfair practices last May. The European Commission is burning bridges by taking action before the national proceedings conclude.
“With this move, the Commission is basically telling EU consumers that hand-luggage is a luxury item that needs to be paid for. It goes in the opposite direction of the European Parliament’s proposal that consumers could bring both a piece of hand-luggage and a small personal item onboard for free. We count on policymakers to tend to consumers’ expectations as they are modernising rules on air passenger rights rules.”
The Spanish government has two months to respond to the European Commission’s warning.
If the European Commission is still not satisfied, it disagreement will move one step closer to ending up in the European Court of Justice.
The Spanish government previously said it was targeting “abusive practices” by airlines.
Ryanair strongly objects to Spain’s fine.
In a statement issued at the time, the CEO of Ryanair Group, Michael O’Leary, said:
“For many years, Ryanair has used baggage and check-in fees at airports to modify passenger behaviour, transforming this into cost savings for consumers in the form of lower fares.
Today’s illegal fines in Spain violate EU law (Regulation 1008/2008) and will be overturned by EU courts.”