Ryanair and French Law

Reported briefly in the Anglophone press over the past couple of days is the news that Ryanair and EasyJet are contesting a French government decree that forces them to obey French employment law for their staff that are based in France (16 pilots and 32 cabin crew in Marseilles). The BBC and RTÉ reports were tellingly vague, giving the impression that the French government are being unfairly - and as Ryanair claim, illegally - protectionist in applying this decree. For those that can read French however there is a more balanced and more nuanced piece on it in today's Libération, which explains the French goverment's stand and affirms, as the European Union has, that they are not flagrantly in breach of European law. The irony is that Air France has said that it may not look into applying the much laxer Irish labour laws for the employees of its subsidiary CityJet, based at Dublin airport.