Its main objective is to raise the general public’s awareness of the unfair competition that currently exists in the airline industry.
The E4FC (Europeans for Fair Competition) was officially launched in January 2016. The E4FC is a “coalition” of citizens, frequent flyers, airlines, but also European workers’ associations and trade unions. Its main objective is to raise the general public’s awareness of the unfair competition that currently exists in the airline industry; in particular unfair competition that is a result of the massive subsidisation of state-owned airlines by the governments of the Gulf (United Arab Emirates, Qatar, etc.).
As the subsidies granted to these companies distort the principle of fair competition, this has a negative knock on effect on employment in Europe. The E4FC coalition has set itself the goal of putting an end to violations of these practices. It is not a question of banning Gulf companies from the European market, but rather the restoration of the conditions for fair and equitable competition between operators. EurECCA, through the E4FC coalition, also wishes to raise the awareness of this issue to decision-makers who often favour the sale of civil and military aircraft to the Gulf emirates rather than seeking to re-establish a fair and level playing field for the national and European air landscape.
Bearing in mind that the EU states have given the European Commission a mandate to negotiate future traffic rights between the European Union and the Gulf States, the E4FC is currently stepping up its lobbying efforts to ensure that future so-called open skies agreements include clauses guaranteeing the conditions for fair and balanced competition. In this way, the coalition is helping to maintain the diversity of air travel in Europe and to ensure the sustainability of European air employment.
To find out more about the E4FC and to follow its activity on social networks, we invite you to visit its Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/faircompetitionEU and its Twitter account: @competitioneu. It is currently developing a website which will be available shortly on http://e4fc.eu.
The E4FC is the European counterpart of the US initiative “Americans For Fair Skies” (http://fairskies.org).
