11. 6. 93 Official Journal of the European Communities No L 140/51 COMMISSION COMMISSION DECISION of 28 May 1993 on a procedure relating to the application of Regulation (EEC) No 2408/92 (Case VII/AMA/1/93 — Viva Air) (only the French text is authentic) (93/347/EEC) THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community, Having regard to Council Regulation (EEC) No 2408/92 of 23 July 1992 on access for Community air carriers to intra-Community air routes (), and in particular Article 8 thereof, After consulting the Advisory Committee established under the said Regulation, Whereas : 1. BACKGROUND On 25 January 1993 Viva Air, whose head office is at Calle Zurbano, 41, 28010 Madrid, Spain, requested the Commission to investigate the legality of the decision by which the French authorities refused Viva Air a licence to operate the Paris (Charles De Gaulle) — Madrid route and to issue a decision based on Article 8 (3) of Regulation (EEC) No 2408/92. Viva Air wanted to operate a new schedule air service between Madrid and Paris (Charles De Gaulle) airport from 2 January 1993 at a rate of two return flights a day. In a telex message of 28 October 1992 it therefore applied to Paris (CDG) for slots, which the appropriate airport authorities granted by telex message of the same date. In a telex message dated 25 November 1992, the Spanish civil aviation authority informed its French counterpart of its decision to authorize Viva Air to operate the service in question and requested the French authorities to do so . () OJ No L 240, 24. 8. 1992, p. 8. too. As no reply was received from the French autorities, the Spanish civil authority confirmed the terms of the first communication in a second telex message on 16 December. By letter of 2 December 1992 Viva Air itself informed the " French authorities of its intention to operate on the route concerned, referred to the authorization issued by the Spanish authorities and gave the flight numbers, the UTC schedules, the airports of departure and arrival, the frequencies, the period of operation and the type of aircraft that would be used. When no reply was received from the French authorities in spite of a meeting with a French civil aviation authority official on 4 December 1992, Viva Air repeated its application in a letter dated 18 December and emphasized the amount it had invested in order to be able to operate the service concerned. The French civil aviation authority replied by telex message on the same date stating that Viva Air’s applica- tion was still under examination. The authority added that the application should have been lodged two months prior to the date on which the service was to start, as required by the Decree of 12 September 1980 which was still in force. Viva Air replied to this telex message in a letter of 22 December 1992 pointing out that the exercise of third- freedom and fourth-freedom intra-Community traffic rights had been completely liberalized by Community rules and that Member States no longer had any discre- tion in these matters. It therefore objected to the applica- tion of the cumbersome procedures provided for in the Decree of 12 September 1980 which, in any case, applied only to non-French carriers, Viva Air added that, on the one hand, the Ffench authorities had been informed of its intention to operate the service in question as long ago as October 1992 when the airline lodged its request for air slots and, on-the other, Viva Air was unaware of any