Well, a country with a decent population size and a decent economy has to rely on air transport. Just now many countries flew out their citizens for example.

As far as I know, Lufthansa, like some other airlines, have a government owned golden share. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_share

In fact, if I remember right, an EU based airline is not even allowed to be owned by more than 50% of non EU share holders.