Ryanair loses EU court battle to keep Irish law for crew abroad

  15 September 2017    Read: 1683
Ryanair loses EU court battle to keep Irish law for crew abroad
Ryanair lost an EU court battle on Thursday in which the airline had sought to continue forcing cabin crew based outside Ireland to take their disputes to Irish courts, in a case with implications across the low-cost airline sector.
The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled in favor of cabin crew based at the Irish carrier’s Charleroi airport in Belgium on the question of which court should decide on their complaint. The employees took the airline to a local court, believing Belgian law would be more favorable to them.

Ryanair argued that Irish courts had jurisdiction over their Irish contracts. But a Belgian court in Mons had requested the ECJ’s ruling on whether its own judges had jurisdiction.

“The Court (of Justice) points out first of all that, as regards disputes related to employment contracts, the European rules concerning jurisdiction are aimed at protecting the weaker party,” the Luxembourg-based ECJ said in a statement. “Those rules enable inter alia an employee to sue his employer before the courts which he regards as closest to his interests.”

Low-cost carriers such as Ryanair and easyJet have bases all over Europe, including in France, Spain, Italy and Germany, where both planes and crews are stationed.

This means crews can return to their home base each night, allowing the airlines to avoid costs involved with overnight rest stops.

Ryanair said the ruling would not add to its costs. Its pilots are typically employed on contracts via third-party agencies, while easyJet uses local labor contracts.

The Court said the place where a cabin crew’s aircraft is stationed should also be taken into account when determining which court had jurisdiction.

Philip von Schoeppenthau, Secretary General of the European Cockpit Association, called the ruling a “landmark” decision that is a “ray of light for the thousands of pilots and cabin crew across Europe who have struggled to find legal protection at the place where they actually work on a daily basis, rather than being forced to seek judicial redress in Ireland”.

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