The European Commission has given its formal approval to the acquisition of Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter by the Lufthansa Group.

The approval follows an extensive assessment of the planned transaction by the European Union’s competition authorities in their merger control capacity, after the Lufthansa Group concluded an agreement in October to take over parts of the insolvent airberlin Group.

Lufthansa had made extensive concessions in advance of today’s approval.

The acquisition of LGW will see 33 aircraft firmly added to the Eurowings Group fleet: 20 Bombardier Dash 8 Q400s and 13 aircraft of the Airbus A320 family.

All the employees of LGW will transfer to Eurowings with their current contracts of employment.

With additional recruitments, the number of personnel in LGW’s flight operations should rise to up to 870 in 2018.

“This regulatory approval of our acquisition of LGW is an encouraging development,” said Thorsten Dirks, member of the Lufthansa Group board and chief executive, Eurowings.

“And I am especially pleased that we can offer our new employees promising prospects within Europe’s fastest-growing airline.”

The formal transaction for the acquisition of LGW has been scheduled for January 2018.

Over the past few weeks, Eurowings has already hired over 500 employees, including a large number of pilots and flight attendants.

Dirks added: “We have the support of our social partners, we are an attractive employer, we have and will be getting more first-rate employees – with these conditions, Eurowings will continue to be a growth engine in 2018.”