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Ryanair, Europe′s largest budget airline, may close some of its routes in Germany because of a new departure tax being introduced by the Berlin government, company officials said Thursday.
"We will have to review all of our routes, and it is likely that these taxes will lead to a decline in passenger numbers," Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara told the German Press Agency dpa.
On Wednesday, the German government had signed off on 20 billion euros (25.6 billion dollars) in budget cuts and tax increases aimed at slashing its deficit. A major component is a new airport departure tax of up to 45 euros on each passenger from January 1, which is expected to raise 1 billion euros a year.
Ryanair spokeswoman Henrike Schmidt told dpa-AFX that the review could then "lead to route closures."
Ryanair operates 174 routes to European and North African destinations from its three German hubs in Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and Bremen. The airline carries some 11 million passengers a year from Germany.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maizere, a key negotiator of East and West German reunification, said on Tuesday that mistakes were made in the treaty signed exactly 20 years ago, but said overall it had been a success.
"It can come as no surprise, with such a comprehensive treaty, that maybe not every single ruling was ideal," said the minister, who in 1990 was a government official charged with negotiating the West German terms of reunification.
"I am thinking, for example of the decision to immediately transfer almost the entire West German legal system to the so-called ′accession area′," he continued, in a festive speech marking the treaty′s 20th anniversary.
Chancellor Angela Merkel was later due to address dignitaries, in the building where the treaty was signed. Guests included the last East German prime minister, Lothar de Maiziere, and the West German foreign minister at the time of reunification, Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
Thilo Sarrazin, the German politician and central banker who published a highly controversial book on immigration Monday, can at least claim to be an equal-opportunity offender.
Everyone - from the Muslim and Jewish communities to his own party and his own employer - is furious with him.
What is it that has everyone up in arms with this imperious- looking, grey-haired technocrat?
First, the Muslims. Sarrazin has long been infamous for his less- than-respectful comments about Germany′s Muslim population, which amounts to, officially, some 4.3 million people, mostly from Turkish and Arab backgrounds.
On Monday he let them have it again, as he launched his book entitled Germany Abolishes Itself: How We Are Risking The Future of Our Nation, in Berlin.
"Islamic culture is responsible" he said, for the perceived below- average educational attainment and above-average criminality of the Muslim population.
They rejected the state, even though they and their ever-growing families lived off it, he said.