EU court: Ryanair won't have to pay back subsidy
Recent Cases
Budget airline Ryanair may no longer have to pay back a euro4.5 million ($6.16 million) subsidy to the Belgian state after a court ruled Thursday against an EU order to refund the sum.
The European Union's appeals court said antitrust regulators made mistakes when they ordered Ryanair to pay back the public money it got to help it run flights from Charleroi airport in the southern Belgium region of Wallonia.
The EU Court of First Instance said the European Commission should have looked at whether the money from Belgian state companies could be seen as a normal market investment — and not state help.
Charleroi was granting the airline up to 90 percent of its costs over 15 years in a deal the Irish airline has mimicked with small airports across Europe.
Ryanair said the court ruling backed the airport's business model of attracting business with low charges for favored airlines. It called on regulators to drop similar subsidy investigations at eight other airports that Ryanair uses.
Ryanair Holdings PLC, Europe's largest low-cost carrier, triggered a revolution in air travel by offering bargain fares that saw millions more Europeans take to the skies — even if that meant an hour-long trip from a regional airport to their city destination.
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USCIS Will Begin Accepting CW-1 Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019
On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
Since USCIS expects to receive more petitions than the number of CW-1 visas available for FY 2019, USCIS may conduct a lottery to randomly select petitions and associated beneficiaries so that the cap is not exceeded. The lottery would give employers the fairest opportunity to request workers, particularly with the possibility of mail delays from the CNMI.
USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.