The Italian government should not have approved a 'bridge' loan for national carrier Alitalia and the European Commission should take a strong position against this action, according to British Airways CEO Willie Walsh.
Speaking to ANSA on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Tuesday, Walsh said ''I do not think it was right that the Italian government gave financial support to Alitalia''.
''I believe the European Commission should adopt a clear and unequivocal position in this. And I think that the situation at Alitalia is something which Alitalia should have dealt with and not the Italian government,'' Walsh added.
The EC, the British Airways CEO stressed, ''must adopt a firm position in order to have credibility not only in Europe but in the whole world''.
Alitalia's chances for survival ''are very slim,'' Walsh observed, ''because while other European carriers restructured themselves to adapt to a very difficult market situation... Alitalia did not follow this same path''.
Today, the air transport sector must deal with the difficult problem of soaring fuel costs and this has only aggravated Alitalia's problems, Walsh said.
''Alitalia was in trouble even before oil surpassed $100 a barrel and now I really can't see how it can survive,'' the BA chief added.
According to IATA CEO and Director General Giovanni Bisignani, British Airways' position is shared by many association members.
''It will be up to the EC to decide whether or not the loan represented an unauthorized government subsidy. For sure we are opposed to all subsidies''.
Bisignani, who was Alitalia's CEO in the late 1980s, said he was not optimistic about the Italian carrier's future and said it was ''madness'' not to have accepted an acquisition offer from Air France.
According to Bisignani, Alitalia ''cannot stand alone... it can only try to survive. Then, once the current sector crisis has subsided, perhaps a buyer will come forward. Right now I can't imagine any manager presenting a plan to buy Alitalia to his board''.
The fact that Alitalia's unions and the new center-right government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi rejected Air France's merger offer was, Bisignani said, ''unexplainable to say the least. For me it was pure madness''.
The previous center-left Italian government of Romano Prodi decided at the end of 2006 to sell most if not all of the Treasury's 49.9% controlling stake in Alitalia.
After an attempt to auction Alitalia failed last summer, the government decided that Alitalia should find a buyer and with it negotiate the sale of the Treasury's stake.
Last December Alitalia's board unanimously chose Air France, which in March presented a takeover offer which was accepted by Alitalia and the Treasury but rejected by unions, because of what they considered as excessive layoffs.
The offer also came in the middle of an election campaign and was definitively torpedoed when the later-victorious center right made it clear that it would scotch the deal.
Berlusconi's government last week presented new guidelines for what will be a third attempt to sell Alitalia.
It is the government's hope that a leading airline will join with a consortium of Italian investors to buy Alitalia.
However, despite assurances from Berlusconi that potential investors were ready to step forward and speculation over who these investors could be, no consortium has been formed nor has anyone expressed a formal interest in Alitalia.
British Airways on Tuesday became the latest airline to state that it had no interest in Alitalia after Germany's Lufthansa, Aeroflot Russian Airlines and Spain's Iberia.
Air France at the weekend said that because of the current market crisis it had to think of its own problems.
Speaking on the sidelines of the IATA meeting, Air France Chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta said he agreed with Maurizio Prato, the ex-Alitalia CEO who helped hammer out the deal with the French carrier, who observed that what the Italian airline needed to survive was ''an exorcist''.
Prato made his remark after unions rejected the Air France offer.
