For decades air transport has been an industry managed exclusively by states, Europe and worldwide. States were the sole owners of both national air carriers (flag carriers) and airports, providing them with unlimited financial means. Also, air transport was highly regulated, i.e. limited in terms of traffic rights which granted the so-called “freedoms of the air” only to carriers from the state of arrival and the state of departure, respectively. Airport management was simply a reflection of the exercise of such rights by carriers. It is only in the last two decades that, through the creation of the internal market, air transport has been liberalised within the European Union (hereinafter: EU). These changes prompted a partial opening of the market of “air transport-related” services – first and foremost airport services, at least the ones whose “nature” allows the opening of the market. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) published a long time ago documents concerning basic principles of airport services and charges paid by air carriers for such services. Not only did those principles become binding by their transposition into EU law, but they also enabled further changes i.e. created a regulatory framework for partial liberalisation of such services. The application of competition law to air transport and related services, which were for such a long time known for strong state protectionism, has led to rich and extensive legislation by the European Commission and case law of the European Court of Justice. Most recently, the Commission has published the Guidelines on State aid to airports and airlines (2014/C 99/03), trying thus to create an adequate framework for the growing number of air carrier business models and subsequent problems with applicable law. Namely, the emergence of low-cost carriers, airline alliances as well as “hybrid” models (a combination of legacy carrier and low-cost carrier), combined with partial privatisation of airports, caused the applicable legal framework to grow as well, imposing obligations on Member States to open their markets – a move which has led to various agreements between air carriers and airports, potentially incompatible with competition law.
In this paper I will give an overview of the applicable legal framework on airport services provided within the EU, the stage of liberalisation of such services and reasoning behind such regulatory measures. Also, I will show the consequent „evolution“ of Commission guidelines on airport and airline state aid, focusing specifically on problems with application of such framework in the Republic of Croatia, taking into account the volume of traffic and high seasonality. Finally, I will try to find a reason for the recent failure in the attempt to change the existing regulatory framework for airport and groundhandling services and examine the potential consequences of these developments on further opening of the market in the so-called “aviation value chain” (supporting services by the air navigation service provider).
