Once in a while, a proposal emerges that has so many clear benefits and so few potential dangers, that the only question is why it is still just a proposal. Within a few weeks, Europe's transport ministers will be faced with just such a compelling idea when they are asked to consider plans for the creation of a single European Air Safety Authority (EASA).
It is already almost impossible to find anyone within the region's aviation industry who has a serious objection to creating such a body. Aerospace manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic have for years been calling for a single body capable of certificating their aircraft across Europe. Airlines attempting to operate within a single air market, but still dealing with a myriad of national aviation authorities, have also been vocal in arguing for a single regulator. Many of their passengers (for which read European voters) may also be surprised to discover that such a body does not already exist.
It is true that the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) has made a good start in bringing some order to Europe's airworthiness regulation, but it is only a start. Whatever the advances made by the JAA (across the range of certification, maintenance, operations and licensing),the body is still no more than a club based on the popular consent of its members, not on the force of law. Its regulations are not binding on its members, nor on industry until they are eventually converted into national laws. There have been proposals to beef up the JAA through some process for adopting its decisions into European law, but the lengthy, bureaucratic procedures required to make that work would come little closer to the ideal of firm, efficient regulation.
Quite apart from the issue of making fast, unified rulemaking, there is a need for Europe to come up with an institution with the weight and international rule-making authority to match the US Federal Aviation Administration. Europe's aerospace industry, increasingly supported by the EC, certainly believes that it is at a growing disadvantage from the FAA's dominance in setting the world agenda on safety and certification issues. Even allowing for some fashionable European paranoia about US aerospace dominance, the industry does have a case.
More importantly, the world would stand to benefit from a more even balance of power across the Atlantic, not least in giving the FAA an equal (and non-North American) partner in its attempts to raise world safety standards. There is every sign that the FAA itself would welcome a strong EASA.
If there are difficulties with turning the EASA concept into a practical reality (and there are many), then they lie not with the concept, but with the legal and institutional issues of creating what would be a unique European body. In essence, it comes down to how to create an agency that has law-making powers, but which avoids the normal bureaucratic path taken by European legislation.
In the end, that will probably mean either giving the new EASA a broad mandate under provisions designed to allow specialist bodies to set harmonised technical standards (admittedly stretching a point), or via an amendment to the European Treaty (a bold and potentially lengthy process). There is also the issue of how the new body would work alongside Eurocontrol (an agency which itself is in need of some teeth), especially if the EASA is to be given responsibility for regulating airports and air traffic safety - as it must. Also, there is a question over states from outside the European Union.
These legal niceties, however complex, are ultimately soluble. Europe has, after all, embarked on much more fundamental and risky ventures (not least a single currency). What really threatens to ground the setting-up of an EASA is the question of political will. Until now, that has not been greatly in evidence, with high-minded talk about the dangers of ceding national sovereignty. The real issues may well be more prosaic, with loss of jobs and status in prospect for national aviation authorities. That should not be allowed to stop an idea whose time has clearly come.
Everyone else within aviation has given the thumbs-up to an EASA. Now it is the turn of Europe's politicians to show the political will - the EC proposals will give them a chance.
Source: Flight International
