BRUSSELS, June 28 (Reuters) - The European Commission has approved, under EU state aid rules, a 1.3 billion euro ($1.4 billion) restructuring state aid programme for Swedish airline SAS, it said on Friday.

In 2020, Denmark and Sweden took part in COVID-19 pandemic state aid measures to help SAS, which was hit as global travel was shut down due to the pandemic.

"To limit any possible distortions triggered by the public support, SAS will reduce its presence on the overall air transport activities," said Margrethe Vestager, the EU's Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy.

This could be through, "among others, a reduced fleet, limited ground handling and maintenance business as well as the release of several slots", she said.

($1 = 0.9349 euros) (Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Jan Harvey)