The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 in the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industry

42 guarantee on the revolving credit facility was only a temporary solution to SAS’s liquidity issues, but it also needed capital with the deepening of the crisis. 161 6.5. The First Judgments Related to COVID-19 Measures Compatible with the Internal Market When designing national aid schemes and grant aid, Member States obviously distort market conditions, and the interventions do have negative impacts on undertakings, which did not receive or cannot receive aid. The distortion is clear in our case as Member States did pour billions of euros to keep for examples airlines afloat during COVID-19 times, even though the market shrank significantly due to both curfew measures and the limited willingness of people to travel. As these measures targeted either individual companies or airlines having permits in the given Member States, Ryanair was not able from benefit from them, even though it had activities in almost all EU Member States. This was the primary reason for Ryanair to submit a series of actions at the General Court against positive decisions of the Commission finding State aid compatible with the internal market. The first two judgments related to a French and a Swedish aid scheme were issued on 17 February 2021. The judgments were adopted in an expedited procedure only ten months after the measures had been approved by the Commission. The French measure aimed at reducing airline taxes and was found compatible under Article 107 (2) b) TFEU, 162 while the Swedish scheme provided for a guarantee for airlines under the Temporary Framework and Article 107 (3) b). 163 The reasoning of Ryanair was the same in both cases. 164 Besides accusing the Commission to wrongly balancing the positive and negative effect of the aid, infringement of the duty to state reasons, and infringement of Article 108 (2) by not opening a formal investigation procedure, the main plea was that the Commission allowed discrimination within the EU 161 See paragraphs (9)-(10) of the recapitalisation decision. 162 Commission decision of 31 March 2020 (C(2020) 2097 final, SA.56765 (2020/N) – France COVID-19 - Moratoire sur le paiement de taxes aéronautiques en faveur des entreprises de transport public aérien). 163 Commission decision of 11 April 2020 (C(2020) 2366 final, SA.56812 (2020/N) – Sweden COVID-19: Loan guarantee scheme to airlines). 164 Judgment in case T-259/20 Ryanair DAC v Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2021:92) and in case T-238/20 Ryanair DACv Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2021:91).