Travel chaos for thousands as French strike forces Ryanair to cancel 170 flights
has cancelled 170 flights, disrupting travel for more than 30,000 passengers due to a nationwide strike by French air traffic controllers.
The action, which begins on Thursday and is expected to continue on Friday, comes at the beginning of the European summer holidays, one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
The French civil aviation agency DGAC on Wednesday asked multiple carriers to reduce flights at Paris airports by 40 per cent on July 4th due to the planned strike.
It will not only affect flights bound for destinations in France, but also those passing through French airspace, such as routes from the UK to Greece, and Spain to Ireland.
READ MORE
'This is due to France's continued failure to protect overflights during national ATC (air traffic controllers) strikes,' Ryanair said in a statement.
'European Union skies cannot be repeatedly closed just because French air traffic controllers are going on recreational strikes.'
[
Customer numbers at Ryanair up 3% in June
Opens in new window
]
The airline has called on European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to reform European Union (EU) air traffic control services
'Once again European families are held to ransom by French air traffic controllers going on strike,' Ryanair Holdings chief executive Michael O'Leary said.
'It is not acceptable that overflights over French airspace en route to their destination are being cancelled/delayed as a result of yet another French ATC strike. It makes no sense and is abundantly unfair on EU passengers and families going on holidays.'
The airline has called on Ms von der Leyen to ensure that ATC services are fully staffed for the first wave of daily departures, and protect overflights during national ATC strikes, saying this would eliminate 90 per cent of all ATC delays and cancellations. – Additional reporting: Reuters
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
44 minutes ago
- RTÉ News
Ireland and Wales agree new co-operation programme
A new programme of co-operation between Ireland and Wales, running to 2030, has been signed by Tánaiste Simon Harris and Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan at the Ireland-Wales Forum in Swansea. The forum was established in 2021 in the aftermath of Brexit to help strengthen ties between both countries. It aimed to build on an Irish-Welsh regional cooperation agreement that operated when the UK was part of the EU, but which lapsed when the UK left the bloc. Mr Harris said it was "a really important demonstration of our deep friendship between our two countries. "We're near neighbours. We share common values. We share a sea, we share so much, and we want to work together in key areas where it makes sense, and we've been doing that for the last number of years". Mr Harris and Ms Morgan signed a new programme of co-operation between both countries running to 2030. Ms Morgan said it marked a "new phase" for the Ireland-Wales Forum. "We're taking it to the next level now, making sure that we get more outcomes that will help to shape the lives of people in Ireland and in Wales, better jobs, better opportunities, making sure that those relationships are meaningful. "You just saw this winter how the storm [Darragh] affected the way that goods were transported between Wales and Ireland. We've now got a strengthened cooperation around resilience, around our ports, making sure that we don't have a situation in future where there's a real threat to those movement of goods between our nations and people as well," she said. Previous achievements from the forum include the Greenlink interconnector between Wexford and Pembrokeshire. As part of the forum, Mr Harris and Ms Morgan will meet researchers at Swansea University, who are working with research colleagues in Cork and Limerick. They will also meet energy company MaresConnect, which is building an interconnector between Wales and Ireland.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Public finances boosted by another spike in corporate tax receipts
The Government's financial position has been boosted by what Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe described as 'a sharp increase' in corporate tax in June. Exchequer returns for the first six months of the year show the business tax generated €7.4 billion last month, which was €1.5 billion or 25 per cent up on the same month last year. June is the second most important month of the year for corporate tax - behind November - as it reflects payments from companies with financial years ending in December, which include Google, Meta, Microsoft and Intel, all of which have big operations here. After a fall-off in receipts in May, there had been concern that US trade policy uncertainty might be affecting the profitability of these firms. READ MORE But the latest figures, published by the Department of Finance, appeared to dispel those concerns with corporate tax receipts - on a cumulative six-month basis - up 7.4 per cent on last year at €13.1 billion and ahead of the department's own forecasts. Nonetheless Mr Donohoe warned the month-to-month changes highlighted the volatility of corporate tax. 'Corporation tax receipts in June have seen a sharp increase, which follows a sharp decline last month,' he said. 'This serves as a reminder of the extreme volatility in this revenue stream, and of its inherent unsuitability as a basis for permanent spending commitments,' Mr Donohoe said. 'That is why we have established the Future Ireland Fund (FIF) and the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund (ICNF) to set aside some of this potentially temporary revenue to help further protect us in the future,' he said. 'Last month, Government transferred some €3 billion into the two funds, and when the remaining transfers are made towards the end of this year, there will be around €16 billion in the FIF and ICNF," Mr Donohoe said. The latest exchequer figures showed overall tax receipts were €49.5 billion in the first six months of the year, up by 4.5 per cent on the first half of last year. When once-off tax revenues of €1.7 billion arising from the European court ruling against Apple are excluded, the department said 'underlying' tax revenues stood at €47.7 billion, which was a 6.7 per cent up on last year. On a cumulative six-month basis, income tax receipts of €17.4 billion were 4.3 per cent ahead of last year, reflecting the ongoing strength of the labour market with headline unemployment remaining at a low of 4 per cent. June was a non-VAT-due month and therefore monthly receipts 'relatively modest,' the department said. Cumulative receipts from the transactions tax for the six-month period came to €11.6 billion, up by almost 6 per cent on last year's total at this stage. Total expenditure for the first half of the year amounted to €50.9 billion, up by 8.2 per cent on 2024 and ahead of the department's profile by 0.7 per cent. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the Government budgetary watchdog, is warning that overruns in day-to-day public spending are likely to top €2 billion this year. The department noted that year-on-year capital spending levels have increased substantially, with capital spending up 22.5 per cent overall. Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said: 'Today's figures show a significant increase in capital expenditure which underscores Government commitment to investing in the infrastructure our community needs and which is critical to enhancing our economic competitiveness,' he said. At a headline level, an exchequer surplus of €4.5 billion was recorded in the first half of the year.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Any EU trade deal with US would be limited in scope initially to avoid July 9th tariffs, von der Leyen says
Any trade deal between the European Union and the United States to avoid steep trade tariffs would be limited to an 'agreement in principle', with further details to be worked out later, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leye n has said. US president Donald Trump has threatened to put tariffs of 50 per cent on imports sold into the US from the EU, if the two sides have not agreed a trade deal by July 9th. Near-blanket tariffs on 10 per cent have been charged on EU goods since early April, with cars and steel subject to higher duties. Speaking in Aarhus, Denmark, Ms von der Leyen said EU negotiators were 'ready for a deal' and wanted a negotiated solution to the transatlantic trade tensions. 'At the same time we are all preparing for the possibility that no satisfactory agreement is reached,' the head of the EU executive said. READ MORE 'As always in negotiations you never know when they are successfully concluded, we are aiming at the 9th of July,' she said. [ EU-US trade deal: Cabinet expects 10% baseline tariffs to remain even if agreement is reached Opens in new window ] It would be 'impossible' for any agreement next week to have trashed out the 'very complex' detail required for a full trade EU-US deal, given the two sides had only been in talks for three months, the German politician said. The EU was finalising a 'rebalancing' package of counter tariffs it would hike on a range of US products and industries, in the event Mr Trump's higher import duties on European businesses came into effect, she added. Earlier today, the Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said he believes an agreement on tariffs was 'possible, but not certain.' Speaking to Ivan Yates on Newstalk's Pat Kenny Show, Mr Donohoe said that the EU would be looking for the minimum level of tariff possible 'And then for sectors that are really important to us we will be making the case that they're very important to America for special recognition of them. I think an agreement is possible, but I don't believe it's certain. 'At the moment, an assessment, a report, is being conducted by the United States government into the life science and medicine sector. And basically, the argument that Ireland is making, along with the European Union, is that if you value affordability in medicines that can make an increasingly big difference to your life, that global supply chains have a big role to play in that. 'And if you want to ship those medicines to other parts of the world, having some of your supply chain outside of America is in your long-term interest for doing that. And that briefly is the case that we are making.' Mr Donohoe said it would be 'very grim for both sides if the situation were to descend to 'tit-for-tat territory'. Trade between the EU and the US was worth €4 billion every day, if a deal did not happen and there were 'escalatory measures' that would mean the price of goods would go up on both sides of the Atlantic, which would have an impact on inflation. The second thing that would happen, he said, would be a real risk that this would be damaging for growth and for jobs, he said. 'We published figures a few weeks ago here in Ireland. A forecast of the impact on the GDP? So we did two things. We said if there's no tariffs, what will our economy look like? And if tariffs are applied, and what we modelled it as on, 10 per cent on everything going into the US and 60 per cent between the US and China. 'And what that would mean for the Irish economy very broadly is that we would still grow, but we would grow at a lower pace. We would still have a record number of people at work, but probably up to 75,000 fewer jobs created across the next two to four years and then we would see our public finances still being surplused but a smaller surplus.'
