The future of the Single European Sky suffers another serious setback

The European airspace users’ community is facing another setback on the implementation of Single European Sky after the Single Sky Committee, consisting of representatives of the 27 Member States of the European Union adopted the so-called performance and charging schemes for the period 2015-2019. This legal framework is a retrograde step for the timely and successful establishment of the Single European Sky (SES).

Last year the European Commission proposed an ambitious revision to the performance scheme for air navigation services (ANS) to improve and amend shortfalls in the initial regulations for charging and performance in ANS. The revised scheme was aiming to reduce the cost of flights, while increasing capacity and better preserving the environment. Following the lengthy discussions, the Member States forced a compromise, which no longer reflects the original goals of the performance regulation and will further strengthen the already existing SES deadlock.

The Heads of the airline associations, AEA, EBAA, ELFAA, ERA and IACA comment:

“Today we saw another example of the failures in building a Single Sky in Europe. We condemn the fact that the EU Member States were finally able to weaken the proposed scheme which will result in further under-performance and will not incentivise the European Air Navigation Service Providers to improve their performance and reduced their costs. We find it unacceptable that the European flagship programme for aviation appears to be rapidly falling apart.”