|
Comment
Single European Sky – States slow progress to airline savings…
The initial European response to the economic crisis has been completely State driven. Each national capital has been out there, announcing measures to save their banks and national jobs. Post facto, the Member States are only now starting to acknowledge that they might try to think of finding a job for The European Commission. For airlines that is bad news, very bad news.
It is bad news because that is also how the States seem to be behaving in relation to the new proposed Single European Sky (SES) package. It might be the start of a trend. You will recall that this is mark II of this proposal anyway, because the first attempt did not get traction. Attempt mark I was gentle, suggesting that the EU Member States might like to get together with their neighbours to form ‘functional airspace blocks (FABs)’. It was a very gentlemanly proposal, calling for honour on all sides – hence the need for mark II.
This is very worrying indeed. Whatever one thinks of the European Union, and Brussels and the creation of a federal super-state and so forth, in air transport, the work of the Commission, and the European experience, has been positive: for the airlines, for the passengers and for the regulators. If the States are going to row back from that, they might have chosen their timing better.
The Council has met several times on this issue in October, and draft working papers and compromises are starting to float around the corridors of power. At superficial first blush, the UK would appear to amongst be the biggest States holding out, but the UK assures that it is doing so only because it is not prepared to sign on to something that is less that acceptable, preferring no deal to a bad deal.
For the first time ever, too, the European Parliament committee has put forward a number of suggested changes that are consistently helpful. Credit should be given to Marian-Jean Mariniescu, from the centre-right party in Romania, who is the rapporteur on this dossier. So the big issue is to get the Member States on-board and in-line.
This is important. Not only will SES of itself make a significant contribution to the airlines’ emission reduction targets, by reducing flight times and distances, but SESAR depends on these changes being made too. If you are going to spend billions on the SESAR project, it seems perverse to pull the rug out from under the feet of the system. All of these changes being made. Says it right there, in fine print. SESAR is looking to almost halve the price of providing gate-to-gate ATM services (from €800 to €450 per flight) but only if the SES measures are in place.
The debate between Member States and the Federal centre is perhaps the defining political argument of Europe, but previously, generally, aviation has stood apart from that particular squabble. It would be very disappointing if that were to unravel now.
|
