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Publish Date : 11-Oct-2013

The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of Olympic Air by Aegean Airlines, both Greek air carriers. The Commission's in-depth investigation has shown that Olympic Air would be forced to exit the market in the near future due to financial difficulties if not acquired by Aegean. Once Olympic would be out of business, Aegean would become the only significant domestic service provider and would capture Olympic's current market shares. Therefore, with or without the merger, Olympic would soon disappear as a competitor to Aegean. Thus the merger causes no harm to competition that would not have occurred anyway.

The Commission's Vice-President in charge of competition policy, Joaquin Almunia, stated: "It is clear that, due to the on-going Greek crisis and given Olympic's own very difficult financial situation, Olympic would be forced to leave the market soon in any event. Therefore we approved the merger because it has no additional negative effect on competition."

The Commission has examined the effects of the proposed acquisition on competition in the affected markets for the domestic air transport of passengers. Aegean is Olympic's closest competitor on these markets in Greece. The Commission initially expressed concerns and opened an in-depth investigation in April 2013 (IP/13/361).

The Greek crisis has seen a drop of 26% in demand for domestic air passenger transport from Athens: from 6.1 million passengers in 2009 to 4.5 million passengers in 2012. This decline has continued during the first half of 2013 (6.3% decrease compared to the preceding year).

Furthermore, the number of routes served by both Aegean and Olympic has decreased substantially over recent years. When the Commission blocked Aegean's previous attempt to merge with Olympic in 2011, the parties provided competing services on 17 routes, nine of which raised competition concerns (see IP/11/68). Currently, Aegean and Olympic have overlaps on seven routes of which the following five domestic routes are served only by them: Athens–Chania; Athens–Mytilene; Athens–Santorini; Athens–Corfu (Aegean only operates in the summer); Athens–Kos (Aegean only operates in the summer).

The market investigation has revealed that entry in the immediate future by other airlines is unlikely on any of those routes. This is due to a variety of reasons: potential entrants see more profitable opportunities elsewhere, they consider the costs of entry too high or they stay away from the Greek domestic market due to Greece's current dire economic situation.

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