OK, David you did ask! If something impinges upon the lives of EU citizens then the Commission feels it has a legitimate right to rule on such matters in as far as it affects EU citizens. If UAL/USA don't want to fly to an EU country then I don't imagine that the Commission would 'stick it's nose in', however if they do want to fly to LHR, MUC, FRA, CDG, etc then they are going to have to expect the deal to be examined. And while I'm here, the US does indeed meddle in every single country's affairs on this planet, but that's not a topic for an aviation list! Except for the old-done-to-death example of Airbus 'subsidies' - from my perspective if Airbus want to subsidise a program 0 or 100 percent - it's none of the US's business, but they still insist on sticking in the proverbial hooter - don't they! Alastair >This EU I'm beginning to think is the devil himself. First it wants to >meddle in the affairs of the United States (e.g. the UAL/USAir merger) now >it wants to regulate foreign airline fares. And what is this about it being >upset about the US government giving aid to the airlines. I am personally >against this myself but I'm an American citizen and have the right to think >this is wrong. The EU should keep its nose out of it. (Same thing works the >other way - if the US started sticking its nose into a EU equivalent, I >would say it's wrong). *************************************** Dr. Alastair T. Gardiner Microbial Photosynthesis Lab 217 Davidson Building IBLS-Division of Biochemistry & Mol. Biol. University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ Scotland Tel. (+44) 141 330 6449 Fax. (+44) 141 330 4620 E-mail. atg3v@udcf.gla.ac.uk http://www.gla.ac.uk/ibls/BMB/rjc/agardiner.html ************************************** Personal web pages at http://www.geocities.com/atg3v Have a look at my airliner photography at http://airliners.net/search/photo.search?emailsearch=atg3v@udcf.gla.ac.uk