After a decade of negotiations, the EU Parliament and the Council of EU member states have reached a provisional agreement to optimize flight routes, reduce flight delays, and cut CO2 emissions.
Belgium (Brussels Morning Newspaper), The Council Presidency, and the EU Parliament reached a provisional agreement on Wednesday to improve airspace management under ‘Single European Sky’ after 10 years of negotiations.
“Today’s deal signifies a shift towards efficiency and sustainability in air traffic management. The current nationalistic airspace architecture hampers progress, leading to longer flights, increased emissions, and unnecessary costs. It’s high time to finally prioritize efficiency over nationalism, to pave the way for safer, more cost-effective, and environmentally friendly air travels in Europe,” said the rapporteur for the European Parliament, the EPP’s Marian-Jean Marinescu, on the sidelines of the agreement.
The Single European Sky regulation that the EU Commission proposed back in 2013, has introduced multiple performance plans with binding targets and incentives to bolster network management of European air space. The agreed text aimed for better organization, performance, and management of airspace to make it more efficient while reducing its costs, and better adaptability, and trying to reduce aviation’s impact on the environment and climate.
Georges Gilkinet, Belgian minister for mobility said, “I am delighted with this result, concluded under our presidency, which will enable major progress to be made in reducing CO² emissions from the aviation sector, and will also give member states more tools to limit the nuisance generated by aeronautical activity. Although much remains to be done to help the sector achieve carbon neutrality, and we will continue to work towards this, the efforts made by all parties to bring this new legal framework for Europe’s skies to a successful conclusion are to be applauded.”
For this purpose, Co-legislators have set up an independent advisory Performance Review Board to help the Commission and member states make decisions on the implementation of these plans. According to the agreement, to assess the performance of the air navigator services and their implementation, the EU will establish an “independent, permanent, and professional” performance review panel that will review its effectiveness every three years. In a press release, the European Parliament urged the Commission to conduct a study to help and define how charges levied on airspace users.
Air navigation services:
The new regulation also encompasses options for air-traffic service providers to be able to get more air navigation services such as communication, meteorological, or aeronautical information services. It also clarifies that “air navigation service providers and the national supervisory authority may be part of the same organization, provided they are functionally separate and meet independence requirements.” EU countries’ supervisory authorities will assess with the Commission — and the independent Performance Review Board — the performance of airlines “while respecting the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.”
Environmental Friendly Airspace:
The reforms also strive to reduce civil aviation’s impact on the environment and climate. It has introduced the mandatory modulation of route charges especially designed to encourage the citizens to support betterment in climate and environmental performances, such as the use of the most fuel-efficient routes available or increased use of alternative, clean propulsion technologies after a cost-benefit analysis determines that such modulation is feasible and presents added value.
The provisional agreement on ‘Single European Sky’ reforms has yet to be approved by the European Union member states, Parliament’ Transport and Tourism Committee, and then formally adopted by the EU Parliament and the Council published in the EU’s official journal and entering into force 20 days after their publication.
Background:
According to European estimates, the air space is divided into 27 different control regions, due to such fragmentation and increasingly busy routes with almost 30,000 flights a day, aircraft while flying an average of 49 kilometers longer than usual, often take wrong routes.
The EU Commission already proposed the Single European Sky Act in 2013, but the file was stuck with member states until Brexit, which prompted the Commission to upgrade the proposal in 2020. The following year Co-legislators updated their positions and engaged in trilogue negotiations to agree on new draft rules, and now after 10 years of long reforms, the Single European Act has passed.
