The demands of Ireland’s low cost airline Ryanair suited the Ukrainian legislation, Managing Partner of Suprema Lex law firm Viktor Moroz has said.
“The demands put forward by Ryanair are feasible and suit the Ukrainian legislation. They are linked only with a desire to find a compromise,” he told Interfax-Ukraine.
Moroz said that the contract between a foreign airline and the Ukrainian state-owned enterprise (SOE) is an international contract. Ukraine regulates the implementation of the international contracts by the law on international private law. The Venice Convention on the Law of Treaties is applied here.
According to these legal acts, the sides have the right to select the law of the contract and the arbitral authority – a court or an international arbitration institution authorized to hear disputes under the contract.
The Boryspil airport had the legal right to select the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) as the place of settling disputes. The airport has one of the contracts the disputes under which are to be heard in Zurich,” the lawyer said.
Commenting on the refusal of the airport to set the airport fee at the level of $7.5 per passenger, Moroz said that the main arguments of the airport are possible violation of the competition law and potential claims from the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine.
“Potentially, such risks do exist, but according to bylaws and orders of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the State Aviation Service aimed at stimulating the development of low-cost transportation and aviation in general, airports have the right to give such preferences,” he said.
The lawyer said that the argument of the Boryspil airport’s managers that when the preferences are provided the airport may not receive profits from air transportation services provided by the Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), is incorrect, as the airlines are tied to concrete airports by contracts with partner airlines, servicing flights in opposite routes and using code sharing.
“Actually the UIA has not chance to leave the Boryspil airport without losing the destinations it is servicing now,” he said.
