Implementation of the third and final part of the European Union's (EU) single-aviation market, or "open-skies" policy, due on 1 April, has brought into focus the need to establish a European-wide safety authority, with many GAMTA members supporting such a move.
Now, each member country of the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC), an association of 33 states, is responsible for aircraft certification and safety through its own national civil-aviation authority. There has been talk of creating a single safety agency within the EU's Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA), but there are problems associated with annexing JAA Joint Aviation Requirements into the statutory laws of countries which are not JAA subscribers. There are six non-JAA members of ECAC: Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.
The UK CAA has been pressing for the formation of a single safety authority for some time, and CAA legal representative Robin Allen notes that proposals for such a mandate should be "on the table" by December. He says, however, that negotiations will be "-dogged by difficulties", leading some GAMTA members to feel that the suggested two-to-three-year timeframe for ratification may be optimistic.
Source: Flight International
