On the margins of the informal meeting of European Transport Ministers, on Tuesday 8 December, (see EUROPE 12617/15, 12618/12), the ministers of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal signed a joint declaration for “socially responsible and fair air connectivity”.
The eight ministers detailed the “profound changes”, exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis, with which the European aviation sector must now contend, namely: “the emergence of airlines’ transnational business set-ups with bases across Europe, legal uncertainty about applicable labour and tax law, a surge in atypical aircrew employment forms and different levels of social protections for workers, an uneven playing field among airlines and inadequate rule-enforcement at national level”.
The Commission and all Member States are invited to consider these “challenges” as a “priority” and to implement measures to ensure greater legal certainty and effective application of European and national rules.
Ministers also stressed the need to address the social dimension in the context of the forthcoming revision of the EU air services Regulation (1008/2008).
The European Cockpit Association (ECA), the organisation representing European pilots, called on policy makers to implement this declaration as soon as possible.
Philip von Schöppenthau, Secretary General of the organisation, stressed that airlines and their employees could only be competitive and recover from the crisis if, among other things, they put an end to the “creation of precarious atypical employment set-ups”.
“Without dedicated efforts to support [the aviation industry] now and restore it in a socially responsible manner in the near future, we are facing lasting harm to hundreds of thousands of aviation workers and their families”, said Otjan de Bruijn, President of the ECA.
Read the statement: https://bit.ly/3oC82Pc (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)