Julian Moxon/PARIS
EUROPEAN TRANSPORT ministers meeting in Luxembourg have signaled their tentative support to giving the European Union (EU) the power to negotiate open-skies deals on behalf of its members.
The 15 EU states have asked the European Commission (EC) to fine-tune its preliminary open-skies mandate, which was hurriedly prepared in response to the USA's success in negotiating individual open-skies deals with six EU members. An in-depth study of the advantages of an EU-wide mandate will be carried out before the end of the year.
"It is a major step forward," claims the EC transport directorate. "For the first time, there was agreement that there could be more value to members in an EC-negotiated deal than for individual open-skies agreements." Many items absent from the individual deals would be included under an EU-wide package, says the directorate, including slot allocation, predatory pricing, environmental issues and traffic rights.
Open-skies agreements already concluded with the USA will still be the subject of legal action at the European Court of Justice. Despite the lengthy procedures involved, this is seen as setting an important precedent to show that the EU, and not individual states, has competence to negotiate with non-EU countries on matters affecting the EU as a whole.
Austria, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg and Sweden have already signed individual deals, while Belgium is on the verge of signing up. As long as these agreements are found to be within EC law, however, Brussels has indicated that they will be allowed to stand.
A final mandate to negotiate on open skies will need approval by the EU Council of Ministers. This could take at least a year and would probably form the basis for all subsequent EU open-skies negotiations.
Source: Flight International
