‘lo all. In case you somehow managed to chew through my Sunday Feb 1 entry here’s a little update on the story.

Well, in case you didn’t make it Sunday, the People’s Republic of Wallonia (Belgian inbred frogeaters) granted Ryanair, in exchange for using its starving Charleroi airport the following:

• a 50% reduction in landing fees
• a 1EUR/passenger fee on ground handling assistance
• a 4 EUR/passenger fee to help Ryanair finance its advertising costs and ticket prices
• grants worth several (4?) millions of euros as start-up benefits

So now the European Commission has ruled that Ryanair has to repay up to 4 million euros of the support it got from PRW. Note that throughout Europe other cheap airliners are harming flag carriers and “serious” carriers with insanely low prices made possible through state-funding and that the Ryanair case may be a precedent for ending this kind of practices. Note too, that two other low fair companies, Bransons Virgin and Easyjet, who do not benefit from sugardaddies, carry banners on their planes with “no subsidies” on it. As it should be.

Now you guys, I guess the article on the EU’s Competition Branch suing Microsoft for the embedded Media Player probably got you shaking your heads again on the EU, and you know what? You’re probably right, in that case the EU's Competition Branch is likely overreacting. But the Ryanair case shows that it’s not all that bad, IMHO. There are worse things, e.g. spending on a Fruitcake Lab in Anchorage, heh heh. Or was it in Maine??? Memory is resembling an Emmenthaler cheese these days....