The plans of Eurowings Europe, a Lufthansa subsidiary, are entering the critical phase: the Maltese AOC should be ready by winter 2022.

Completion of the aircraft and crew transfer is scheduled for summer flight schedule 2023. At the same time, the base in Munich will be closed. The Independent Flight Attendant Organization (UFO) fears that the airline wants to get rid of expensive staff in this way in order to hire low-wage workers in the future. 

"We had already seen it coming in February that our colleagues in Munich would be abandoned without any prospects. There is no adequate agreement that they will now be taken over within the Lufthansa Group. We also consider the possibility of applying to Eurowings Discover and then accepting a salary loss of up to 50 percent, as if you had never worked for the group, to be unreasonable. To this day, Eurowings Discover does not accept tariffs,” says Deputy UFO Chairwoman Anja Bronstert. 

The closure of the Munich base now means the fourth end for a German AOC of the Lufthansa Group. 

"In view of the most recent statements by Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr not to let the employees down in times of inflation, we cannot understand how part of the group workforce is once again excluded from it. In the case of the Eurowings Europe workforce, this seems to be just lip service that is effective in the media,” Bronstert continued. UFO had already suspected in February that this step was also an escape to the tax haven of Malta. 

“After Germany invested billions in maintaining the Lufthansa Group during the Corona crisis, a tax avoidance strategy based on the Ryanair model is now being pursued. The investment in the Lufthansa Group should be refinanced as soon as the company starts making profits again. With its new establishment in Malta under the new name 'Eurowings Europe Limited', the Lufthansa subsidiary is now deliberately avoiding this,” Bronstert concludes. 

Eurowings Europe is a 100 percent subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and initially benefited primarily from the lack of tariffs. At regular intervals, new bases are opened in Europe, which largely take over German production and replace German jobs.