Mr. Filip Cornelis:

While it is not easy for me to give specific answers relating to Ireland, what I can say in reply to the Chairman's final question is that at this moment airlines, airports and others in the sector are burning through their cash reserves. In terms of combining a programme of cost reduction with the attempt to find fresh money, some airlines have received money from the state, some from the financial markets and others are using their financial reserves but they are finite. What we are seeing and hearing from the sector is that if the current situation persists with a traffic level that is only half what it should normally be and the number of passengers only a quarter of what it would normally be, there will bankruptcies and-or large-scale redundancies. We are already seeing some longer term effects with airlines scaling back their operations and, for example, retiring part of their fleet in a structural way. This makes us believe that we will come out of this crisis not entirely in the same shape and form as we entered it. There will be some longer term impacts. The industry often refers to a long period of gradual resumption of traffic levels up to 2024, or sometimes even beyond that.

Next year, the European Commission will conduct an indepth study to try to understand the longer-term structural impact of this crisis on the sector and determine whether we need to adapt our legal framework or programmes in order to achieve a green and sustainable recovery of the sector while re-establishing free movement and the many interconnections between people and businesses in Europe.