Brussels, 10/03/2010 (Agence Europe) - The Transport Council to be held in Brussels on Thursday 11 March will be dominated by aviation issues, with a policy debate on the proposal for a regulation on investigation and prevention of accidents and incidents in civil aviation (see EUROPE 10009) and consideration given to the state of play in negotiations on an “Open Skies” aviation agreement with the United States (see EUROPE 10094). The meeting of EU transport ministers, which will be chaired by Spanish minister José Blanco López, will seek to reach a general approach on the draft regulation brought forward by the European Commission in October of last year with a view to strengthening and harmonising the conduct of safety investigations. Though most points have been settled in the working groups, ministers will still have to decide the extent to which the European Air Safety Agency (EASA) should be involved in investigations. They will also have to determine the arrangements for communicating confidential information, and the relationship between safety investigations and judicial investigations. The amendments which the Council plans to make to the regulation, which, inter alia, sets up an official European network of civil aviation safety investigation authorities, must ensure a balance between the areas of responsibility of the Community and of member states themselves. They must also avoid any possible conflict of interests between EASA, which is responsible for approving aeroplane safety, and safety investigations. Ministers will have to decide in which areas the Agency has a purely consultative role to play and those in which it could bring an added value, in gathering and analysing the information from the investigation. The debate should also determine the timescale within which air carriers will be required to submit to competent authorities the passenger list for any plane involved in an accident (whether one or two hours after the accident). Ministers will take note of a progress report on a proposal for a directive on aviation security charges, currently going through the European Parliament (the first reading vote is scheduled for April). Since the last Council report in December 2009, little progress has been made so the key issue remains the scope of the proposed legislation (the Commission would like to see it apply to all EU airports, the Council to airports with an annual threshold of 5 million passengers, and the latest proposal from the European Parliament transport committee would restrict it to commercial airports). The Spanish Presidency compromise suggests restricting the scope of the proposed directive to airports through which at least 2 million passengers pass every year. The Council will also be informed by the Commission of the state of play of negotiations on a second-stage air services agreement with the United States. It will discuss the issue with a view to giving guidance for the next steps. The Commission will also brief ministers on the recent rail accident at Buizingen, in Belgium, and on the trans-European transport network ministerial conference in Zaragoza on 8-9 June. In land transport, the Council is expected to reach a general approach on a draft directive on transportable pressure equipment, in order to update and streamline existing legislation. (A.By./transl.rt)