On Wednesday 27 June, the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and European Parliament representatives held their first trialogue inter-institutional negotiating meeting on the revision of regulation 868/2004 for tackling unfair competition from third country airlines. The negotiators are hoping to complete these negotiations by the end of November.
The main aim of this first working meeting was to reach an agreement on a timetable and working methods for revising this text. The European Commission proposed the revision on 8 June 2017 (see EUROPE 11804).
It should be recalled that the European Parliament adopted a more robust position than that of the Council of the European Union (see EUROPE 11984, 12036). The different parties would like to reach a swift agreement, with the number of political questions that need to be settled being quite modest.
There are, however, some real and substantial differences involving, for example, the question of whether operational measures should be adopted or not in the event of possible damages that could be suffered by a European airline due to anti-competitive practices by a third country operator. The member states, as opposed to the European Parliament, are against this possibility. The latter does not want to exclude the possibility of suspending or restricting third company flying rights either, which is opposed by the member states.
Questions of possible sanctions for breaching international obligations, the prevalence of multilateral agreement on this regulation and which authority should be responsible for adopting the sanctions, also need to be resolved.
Several technical meetings to resolve uncontroversial questions will take place over the next few months. The first has already taken place, on Thursday, 28 June.
The future Austrian Presidency of the Council of the EU is expected to request a negotiating mandate for the Committee of Permanent Representatives to the EU (Coreper) in September and a second political trilogue focusing, for the first time, on the contents will certainly take place on 24 September. Two other meetings are planned for October and November and negotiators are hoping that the latter will prove conclusive. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)