EC URGED TO ACT QUICKLY ON EUROPEAN AIRFARE CUTS
The European Commission should make urgent
and concrete proposals to break the deadlock over moves to cut
sky-high European airfares, an independent report said.
    The report by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) said
costs, fares and profits on international services within
Europe are the highest in the world although European airlines
are less efficient and not perceptibly safer than their cheaper
U.S. Equivalents.
    "The European airlines protect their position through the
secrecy they maintain over the costs and profits of any group
of services," the report said.
    The airlines also protect themselves through "the ferocity
with which (they) resist any relaxation of the monopolistic
practices which protect their profits," the report said.
    Britain, a strong advocate of deregulation, has been trying
to push measures to introduce greater competition among
Europe's airlines but negotiations foundered at the end of 1986
over discount and deep discount fares.
    The IEA report said European governments and the
Commission, the EC executive authority, had been
extraordinarily lax about the airlines' secretiveness, showing
"a lack of concern for the interests of the traveller."
 REUTER
