EU won't open skies<BR>

During EU accession negotiations held in Brussels, Deputy Transport Minister Andrzej Grzelakowski also said LOT Polish Airlines will not be in shape to compete with European airlines by Jan. 1, 2003, the date Poland is scheduled to join the EU. LOT will need some type of protective measures to join the marketplace, he added.
A spokesman for British Airways, LOT's potential strategic partner, said he was unaware of the government's plans to keep Poland's air transport regulated. Yet little would change as a result, especially in terms of the partnership, said Piotr Czarnowski, public relations manager at First Public Relations, the Warsaw firm representing BA. The airline plans to join forces with LOT when the government puts an estimated 49% of LOT shares on the block by the end of next year.
Yet LOT's biggest competitor, Lufthansa German Airlines, said it could feel a pinch from the failure to open the market. The capacity of Lufthansa flights in and out of Warsaw is already stretched, said Hans Scheller, the company's director. Plus, existing laws governing Poland's airways further constrain Lufthansa by preventing it from bringing in larger planes to accommodate demand, he said.
According to Scheller, Lufthansa also would like to add flights to Gdansk, Krakow and Poznan, but they are prohibited from doing so by the agreement. Lufthansa had hoped for a total free-sky agreement, he said, but the best case scenario may be concessions in bilateral talks.