Although the gradual liberalisation of the European airline market is drawing to an end in a context of complete freedom of transportation, this market still features a great number of legal disparities at several levels. The ideals of the Single European Market seem to be completely absent in the airline sector: each State controls its own territory with operation systems and standards of its own, which therefore vary considerably from country to country.
If globalisation is to be the challenge of the turn of the century, then mergers, buy-outs, alliances with carriers which operate in large markets, together with franchising and code sharing agreements, are undoubtedly the instruments that European airline companies will have to use in order to compete with the main carriers and remain on the market.
