A top European court said today that European Commission approval of Air France's merger with Dutch peer KLM was justified as it rejected rival Easyjet's attempt to derail the tie-up.
"The pleas put forward by Easyjet do not prove that the commission committed manifest errors of assessment in declaring the merger compatible with the common market," the Court of First Instance, the European Union's second-highest court, said in a statement.
Air France and KLM in 2003 unveiled their merger plans, which the European Commission's antitrust officials approved in February 2004.
Easyjet, a competitor of both airlines, asked the European court to scrap the commission's approval, saying the EU executive failed to assess properly the impact of the merger.
The budget airline also said an undertaking by the merger partners to minimise negative effects on competition in 14 direct flights, mainly from Amsterdam, was unfavourable to low-cost carriers and inadequate to keep a competitive market.