The German airline Lufthansa, the parent company of Brussels Airlines, received the green light from the European Commission on Wednesday to take a stake in ITA Airways. The agreement includes a capital injection of 325 million euros in exchange for a minority stake of 41 percent. This deal had been in the works for more than a year. However, the European competition authority feared that competition on certain European routes would be curtailed too far, but after a number of commitments, the deal will now go ahead. Founded in November 2020 after its predecessor Alitalia threw in the towel in 2017, ITA Airways has until now been owned by the Italian government. The airline has almost 5000 employees and is based at Rome-Fiumicino Airport. According to Lufthansa, the hub in Rome provides ideal conditions for the expansion of the joint route network to Africa and Latin America, which will improve connections to the southern hemisphere. Caster Spohr, the CEO of the German airline group, suggested in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Thursday, a day after the deal was approved, that Lufthansa plans to increase its stake in ITA to 90 percent. At the time, Brussels Airlines was similarly taken over by the Lufthansa Group, which also has subsidiaries Eurowings, Austrian Airlines and Swiss under its wings.
