The issue of national sovereignty is still the biggest obstacle to efficient use of Europe's air traffic control capacity and the political sensitivities have already led to a sharp rebuke for the European Commission.
The Commission was warned at the end of September by the Council of Ministers not to interfere in the debate after producing a study on congestion. 'In more diplomatic and bureaucratic language [the Council] says: keep Commun- ity hands off,' lamented Claude Probst, head of unit at the European transport directorate, at a European Aviation Club symposium in Brussels in early October.
Brussels was criticised recently by five former Comité des Sages members for the lack of progress in the area of ATC, but in a rare attack on the Council, the Commission clearly puts responsibility back on individual member states.
While assuring the audience he was looking to cooperate with Eurocontrol, Probst said that the Council's decision 'is not progress for the airspace users, nor for Eurocontrol itself, because it also means that the [ATC] community refuses any supranational constraint or discipline.'
The majority of the speakers, who included Iata director general Pierre Jeanniot and director general of Eurocontrol Yves Lambert, supported some form of single European ATC system. But the strongest dissent came from the chairman of the UK CAA Sir Christopher Chataway. He put the management demands of a single ATC system ahead of the sovereignty issue. 'It is extraordinarily unlikely that the political and management genius exists to run these organisations as an entity.'
Source: Airline Business
