Berlin (AFP)

The German government and Lufthansa are very close to an agreement to save the first European air transport group, weighed down by the impact of the new coronavirus, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Wednesday evening.

"The government is intensively holding discussions with the company and the European Commission, a decision is expected shortly," Merkel said at a press conference in Berlin about the plan for the company, also present via subsidiaries in Switzerland, Belgium and Austria.

An agreement could be formalized on Thursday, after approval of the plan by the company.

The German state intends to bring 9 billion euros to support the company, which employs nearly 140,000 workers worldwide and whose planes are almost completely grounded, say the economic daily Handelsblatt and the weekly Der Spiegel.

According to the details given by the Handelsblatt, the State intends in particular to take a 20% stake in the capital and thus hold shares in the company for the first time since its total privatization in 1997.

He must also hold a convertible bond allowing him to increase his share in the capital by 5% plus an additional share, in order to reach a blocking minority.

Objective, according to the Handelsblatt: to prevent any hostile takeover bid at a time when the company is financially weakened. It is only worth around 4 billion euros on the stock market today.

- Political tensions -

This two-stage arrangement is the result of a difficult political compromise found within the government coalition of Angela Merkel, between conservatives and social democrats, as well as with the company.

The SPD social democrats demanded a blocking minority from the outset, and therefore partial nationalization, in order to have a say in the group's decisions.

"The state is not the idiot of service which is limited to paying the money and then no longer has a say," said recently one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Carsten Schneider, at Die Welt daily newspaper.

The Chancellor's conservatives, supported by Lufthansa, refused, hence the starting point set at 20%.

The chairman of the conservative CSU party, Markus Söder, said he was "extraordinarily skeptical about this model of quasi-stateization" of Lufthansa on the model of the national railway company.

As part of the final compromise, the state should have two seats on the supervisory board.

But they will be occupied by professionals from the business world, as in the Airbus model, and not by politicians or senior officials, says the Handelsblatt.

In addition, the Austrian subsidiary of Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, said Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with its cabin crew on salary reductions and a reduction in working hours, likely to allow a resumption of flights in June, according to the agency. APA.

Most European airlines have called on public authorities to help the pandemic. The French state will thus help the company Air France with 7 billion euros.

© 2020 AFP