Brussels, 23/09/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is extremely critical of the delays in implementing the Single European Sky II agreement and made this clear on 22 September 2011, when it voted through the opinion of Jacek Krawczyk of Poland, from the Employers' Group. The Single European Sky II deal made changes in 2009 to European aviation to increase safety, reduce CO2 emissions and reduce the number of delayed flights. The EESC rapporteur regrets that the reforms have only been partially implemented. He says this is due to lack of political commitment by the member states and lack of leadership by the European Commission despite the fact that he feels the Commission is perfectly capable of overcoming the obstacles to proper airspace management.
Operational blocks. The EESC urges the European Commission to closely monitor progress in the slow, piecemeal restructuring of the European sky into “operational blocks”. The Single European Sky II legislation gets rid of the 27 existing airspaces, replacing them by 2012 with nine new “operational blocks”. The current segmentation of airspace makes routes inefficient and causes losses of around €5 billion a year. The reorganisation should reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 12%.
SESAR. The EESC says proper funding is needed for SESAR (the Single European Sky ATM Research), a project to overhaul air traffic management in Europe. Krawczyk points out that without proper allocation of EU resources to fund SESAR, it is unlikely that the programme will be introduced on schedule. A 10-year delay in introducing SESAR would have a negative impact on GDP (to the tune of €150 billion for the EU27) and would lead to reduced energy efficiency (a loss of 150 million tonnes of CO2).
The EESC opinion welcomes progress in interoperability and the signing of a cooperation agreement with NexGen, the US equivalent of SESAR, along with progress in restructuring Eurocontrol, the European air traffic safety organisation. (MD/transl.fl)