A seven-year attempt to establish a Europe-wide confidential aviation safety reporting system has failed and will stop operating at the end of this month.
However, the steering group of the European Confidential Aviation Safety Reporting System (EUCARE)has drawn up recommendations for a European Commission directive that could require all European Union (EU) states to operate a totally confidential safety reporting system.
The only nations that currently run independent confidential aviation safety reporting systems are Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.
EUCARE's failure is attributed to irreconcilable national legal differences between EU states, says programme manager Siegfried Niedek. The problem is that in many European countries, there is no provision for total confidentiality and immunity from legal action, says Niedek.
One of the main arguments for a centralised Europe-wide system is that even the de-identified data about an event could, in a single European country, be identified from the circumstances. Across Europe, identification of an event would be difficult or impossible.
EUCARE operated for four years in prototype form, run by the Technische Universitat Berlin, Germany, and attracted safety reports from all sectors of the aviation community. It tracked trends using a database of information from de-identified reports.
Source: Flight International
