Why did Flanders retreat in its €12.1 million airport dispute?

A leaked 2023 letter has revealed that the private operators of Antwerp and Ostend-Bruges airports invoked the risk of bankruptcy while pressing the Flemish government to resolve a multimillion-euro funding dispute. Three years later, Mobility Minister Annick De Ridder’s Flemish government approved a settlement that dropped its €12.1 million claim against the airport companies while they abandoned claims worth €14.8 million.

The disclosure matters directly to Flemish taxpayers because the settlement determines who bears costs accumulated under the region’s unusual public-private airport model. It also affects passengers, airport workers and residents around Deurne and Ostend, whose competing interests — connectivity and employment on one side, public spending, noise and emissions on the other — have long made the airports politically sensitive.

De Morgen reported on 4 September that the 2023 correspondence showed the operators warning that nobody would benefit from a bankruptcy. The wording did not amount to a formal insolvency filing, and the available documents do not establish that bankruptcy was imminent. It nevertheless placed the continuity of both airports inside a negotiation over money owed in each direction.

The Flemish Region owns the airport infrastructure through public airport-development companies, while separate operating companies, LEM Antwerpen and LEM Oostende-Brugge, run the airports under the influence of French infrastructure group Egis. Vlaanderen had sought €12.1 million for personnel it had made available to the operators. The operators, meanwhile, claimed €14.8 million for unpaid subsidies and expenses including security requirements, permit files and environmental work, according to VRT NWS and De Standaard.

The dispute had already moved beyond administrative disagreement. De Ridder told the Flemish Parliament on 22 July that no negotiated solution had initially been reached and that the operators had gone to court. A 2024 judgment went against the Flemish Region, she said, creating a real risk of further litigation and legal costs. Her argument is therefore that the settlement was a controlled exit from an uncertain case: both sides surrendered claims, historical disputes were closed and new subsidies would be more limited and tightly defined.

The settlement, approved on 17 July, remained largely out of sight until De Ridder’s office accidentally distributed it to parliamentarians. De Standaard reported that it accompanied agreements intended to provide subsidy certainty until October 2039. That long horizon is politically important because it makes the arrangement more than a bookkeeping compromise; it helps secure the operating framework of the airports for another thirteen years.

Bogdan Vanden Berghe, a Groen member of the Flemish Parliament, reads the sequence differently. After the 2023 letter surfaced, he argued that the eventual payment appeared to answer pressure from the operator and demanded greater clarity about contacts between Egis and government members. Groen also says De Ridder had previously indicated that paying the disputed support could conflict with European rules, while Belgium’s Finance Inspectorate had issued negative advice. Those are attributed political and administrative objections, not a finding by the European Commission that unlawful state aid occurred.

The figures complicate both narratives. By abandoning €12.1 million while the operators dropped €14.8 million, Flanders can argue that the nominal balance favoured the public side by €2.7 million. But that comparison does not settle whether every claim was equally recoverable, how the amounts will be recorded, or what the threatened insolvency would have cost. Parliamentarians from the opposition and governing parties have also questioned whether promised subsidy reductions are meaningful once the settlement, infrastructure expenditure and other public obligations are included.

The international element is real but secondary. A French-linked group operates strategic Flemish infrastructure, while EU state-aid rules constrain how regional authorities may support commercial airports. No published European Commission decision has yet established that this settlement breaches those rules, and the Commission’s position remains unclear.

De Ridder is expected to face renewed parliamentary questioning after the latest leak. The central unanswered questions are whether officials independently tested the bankruptcy warning, how the government valued the competing claims, what Finance Inspectorate objections were overridden, and whether the settlement or subsequent subsidies require scrutiny under EU state-aid law.