Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EC) No 216/2008 in the field of aerodromes, air traffic management and air navigation services

The development of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) framework, set out in particular in Regulation EC No 216/2008, is intertwined with the development of the Single European Sky initiative. The Single European Sky (SES) initiative aims to improve the overall efficiency of the way in which European airspace is organised and managed through a reform of the industry providing air navigation services (ANS). Its development has involved two comprehensive legislative packages – SES I and SES II composed of four regulations, i.e. Regulations (EC) No 549/2004, (EC) No 550/2004, (EC) No 551/2004 and (EC) No 552/2004, and also includes a comprehensive project to modernise equipment and systems for air navigation services under the SESAR title.

In 2009, Regulation (EC) No 1108/2009 extended the competences of EASA to include air traffic management and air navigation services (ATM/ANS). Whilst this also implied the incorporation of various ATM/ANS technical regulation elements into the scope of EASA, the corresponding changes to the four SES Regulations were not completed simultaneously. Instead the European Parliament and the Council preferred to leave the corresponding and existing competencies in the four abovementioned SES Regulations intact to ensure that there would be no gaps during the move from the old legal framework to the new one and also to support the idea that the new EASA-based framework should be built on existing SES principles.

The legislators addressed this overlap in the Regulations by inserting a new Article 65a into Regulation (EC) No 216/2008. This article requires the Commission to propose amendments to the four SES Regulations to take into account the requirements of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008.

Secondly, there is a more general mismatch between the approach used for all other sectors of aviation (airworthiness, crew licensing, air operations etc.) in the EASA framework and air traffic management (ATM/ANS). Generally speaking the approach is that all technical regulations are concentrated within the scope of EASA to meet the objectives of Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008 and economic regulation is carried out by the Commission. However in ATM/ANS (i.e. SES) the picture is more mixed, with technical regulations stemming from various sources. It would therefore be beneficial to ensure a harmonised approach to this important regulatory area, so that all consultations are conducted with the same thoroughness, all rules fit in the same structure and serve the same objectives, making life easier for those responsible for applying the rules and finally to ensure that the impending wave of technological innovations stemming from the SESAR initiative can be implemented in a co-ordinated manner in both airborne and ground equipage and procedures.

This regulatory initiative aims to fulfil the requirement of article 65a, by deleting the overlaps between the SES and EASA Regulations and simplifying and clarifying the border line between EASA and SES legal frameworks. In doing so, the amendment also supports the political objective of ensuring clarity of tasks between the Commission, EASA and the Eurocontrol organisation so that the Commission focuses on economic and technical regulation, with EASA acting as its agent on technical regulation drafting and oversight, while Eurocontrol will focus on operational tasks, in particular built around the Network Manager concept.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2013)409: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2013:409:FIN

ESO: Background Information: Single Sky: Commission acts to unblock congestion in Europe's airspace http://www.europeansources.info/record/press-release-single-sky-commission-acts-to-unblock-congestion-in-europes-airspace/

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