Elections ground talks on ‘open skies’

Date: 12/06/1997

By Chris Johnstone

TRANSPORT Commissioner Neil Kinnock's plan for the EU to negotiate a new air traffic deal with the United States has been stalled by the spate of recent European elections and caution over pushing governments too far, too fast.

Kinnock has decided not to press the point at a meeting of transport ministers next Tuesday (17 June) since the biggest opponents of giving the Union more powers - France and the UK - have only just changed governments.

The new ministers will be allowed time to settle in their seats before Kinnock's bid to pilot talks with the US resurfaces in October.

The Commissioner has no choice but to play his hand carefully. He is trying to take the lead in negotiating an 'open skies' agreement with the US on the grounds that a single European bloc will get a more even-handed deal with Washington than those already sealed with individual countries.

The Americans have already signed open skies accords with almost all European countries, with the main exception of France (where arguments over transatlantic capacity for national airlines flare up regularly) and the UK.

However, cautious national governments have ensured they can keep a close watch on Commission contacts with the US.

They only authorised the Commission to talk to Washington about secondary aviation issues, such as access to computer reservation systems, code-sharing, and ownership restrictions, and demanded that officials come back to them again for a fresh mandate if they wanted to talk about traffic rights.

With most of the secondary issues covered in bilateral negotiations, Brussels and Washington are impatient to explore the possibilities of an open skies deal.

Brussels points to practical gains for the US in negotiating with one European authority. The biggest plus would be that Washington would only have to deal with one administration rather than 15. That point has actually been endorsed by past American transport secretaries who, once out of office, have admitted that the US might have made a mistake in the early 1990s in forging ahead with deals with individual European capitals.

The long and sometimes acrimonious talks between the US and UK over the last year on a new bilateral aviation accord have reinforced the notion that the Commission's involvement may not be such a bad thing.