Frankly, Meccano, I don't give a rodent's posterior what happens about foreign ownership of US carriers; that's for the EU and US to sort out; what I do find extremely irritating is that the EU can simply block us like this.
When the EU took the various EU countries to Court initially, it was on the grounds of Competition Law and now, we have the EU IMPOSING competitive disadvantage; how realistic is it to accept this. Once and for all, we need to get a focus on getting this nonsense out of the way, even if it means opting out of the whole EU Open Skies process. As EI-RB says, quite rightly, what Ireland wants poses no competitive disadvantage to any other country; our current bilateral and even the change to 3:1 is considerably behind any other EU countries; there is a clear difference of treatment and assuming the EU wants its Constitution passed, it will need to realise that it cannot act in this high handed, arrogant matter. This is an abuse of power, nothing less. We can address it the easy way (they let us do what we ask, which is reasonable) or the hard way (we make it very clear that the Constitution is at stake and that the govt will not put any Const. before the Irish people which does not include new provisions to stop this kind of thing happening in future).
We cannot simply write off another Summer, so everything needs to be on the table. And EI-RB, believe me, the words I would like to choose would probably get me a sharp dressing down, so I shall restrict myself to the words of Capt. Blackadder: I think the phrase rhymes with Clucking Bell.
