During a visit to Brussels, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary was hit in the face with cream pies by two climate activists while preparing for a press conference in front of the European Commission.
O’Leary was getting ready to submit Ryanair’s petition on the protection of overflights during French air traffic control (ATC) strikes to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Standing next to a cardboard cutout of the president while taking out of a box a binder that read “Protect overflights. Keep EU skies open. 1.5 million signatures”, two women passing by threw cream pies at the CEO, the first one saying “Welcome in [sic] Belgium”, while the second one added “Stop the pollution of the fucking planes.”
The CEO laughed the action off and can be heard on footage saying “Well done” before continuing to the matter at hand about the petition. Reporters on scene tried to question O’Leary, but he insisted that first the petition needs to be presented to von der Leyen and then he would answer all questions in a subsequent press conference. At the insistence of the journalists asking about the cakes, he replied: “I love cream cakes, they’re my favourite”, then went back to the petition.
In typical Ryanair fashion, the airline’s X / Twitter account was then filled with sarcastic posts about the incident. “Warm welcome in Brussels today to celebrate RYR’s 7 new routes for Winter 23. Passengers so happy with our routes and petition that they’re celebrating with cake. We’ve got tasty low fares!”, the first post reads.
Another post mocks the two women for being climate activists, saying they could have at least got tastier “real stuff” rather than soy-based cream. According to Belgian media DeMorgen, O’Leary himself later said: “I’ve never had such a warm welcome. Unfortunately, they were environmentalists and the cream was artificial. I invite the passengers to come to Ireland, where the cream is better.”
On 20 March, Ryanair launched a petition calling on the European Commission to force France to protect overflights during the French ATC strikes. The petition asks for EU overflights to be included in the French minimum service laws; for Europe’s other ATCs, overseen by Eurocontrol, to manage flights over France during French ATC strikes; and for a mandate that French ATC unions engage in arbitration instead of strikes.
Ryanair started the petition as a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), a mechanism established in 2007 by the Treaty of Lisbon to allow citizens to be directly involved in the development of EU policies. A petition can be started by anyone and if it gets 1 million signatures from citizens of at least 7 different Member States, the Commission is obliged to seriously consider the proposition, but not to accept its demands.
In only 5 weeks from launching, the petition already had over 600,000 signatures and now, at more than 1.5 million, O’Leary himself came to Brussels to submit the ECI.
