Royal Air Maroc CEO Urges Review of EU-Morocco Open Skies Agreement

"In terms of regulation, it would be time to review the Open Sky approach to make it a tool that preserves competition," said Abdelhamid Addou on Wednesday during a conference organized in Marrakech by the Competition Council on the theme "Neutrality, competition and market access."

The CEO of Royal Air Maroc (RAM) recalled on this occasion that the Open Sky "is a decision taken by the State which, at the time, was an extremely judicious decision, since it opened the field to a multitude of airlines that come to our country," noting that this decision has contributed to the development of tourism and aviation in Morocco.

However, this opening has also created difficulties for the Moroccan airline, he notes, stressing that RAM "is the public company that has the most competitors in our country, about forty competing airlines. There is no other sector that has opened competition in this way."

"When we try to open new lines in Europe, it’s much more complicated. We talk about ’Open Skies and Close Airport’," he said, denouncing an unbalanced policy that offers broad access to the African and Moroccan market to European companies and imposes restrictions in Europe on airlines from the South.

The RAM boss believes that "we are in an exercise with variable geometry, and it would be time to respect the companies of the South a little more and that, when we talk about competition, it is a real and human competition," calling to negotiate the revision of the Open Sky agreements, as Tunisia or Egypt have done.