On Monday 11 January, the head of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Transport (DG MOVE), Filip Cornelis, was confronted with a series of speeches full of concern, incomprehension, and even total disagreement when he appeared before the European Parliament’s Transport Committee (TRAN).
Mr Cornelis had been invited to present to MEPs the recent Commission proposal for a regulation on the allocation of slots at EU airports (see EUROPE 12625/9). The institution hopes that this will enable a gradual return to the European rule of ‘use it or lose it’, from which airlines have been exempt since March (see EUROPE 12456/17, 12559/6).
The nature and content of the text, first of all, gave rise to sharp questions. How can it be explained that the scope of this proposal extends beyond “only the use of slots” and that its period of application can be extended until 2024?, asked Socialist coordinator Johan Danielsson (S&D, Sweden), who was surprised that this exemption proposal differs significantly from the one made in March.
Dominique Riquet (Renew Europe, France), supported by many of his colleagues, also regretted that this proposal “goes far beyond the imperative need to develop slots for the summer season”, even describing it as “a new text on slots”.
This proposal aims to amend Regulation 95/93 governing the allocation of airport slots in the EU. However, a recasting of this same regulation - initiated in 2011 by the Commission - is still blocked at the EU Council level.
“Our group will not accept that, on a text on which we have been waiting nine years for the position of our partners, an emergency decision should call into question everything, totally depriving Parliament of its prerogatives as co-legislator”, he said.
“The right balance”
Filip Cornelis defended himself by assuring that this proposal had been designed to be limited in time and application to problems related to Covid-19.
Concerning the introduction of new elements, he indicated that they were few in number and that, for the most part, they echoed the conditions agreed by the whole sector for a waiver from the European rules that is free from abuse (see EUROPE 12553/4).
According to Filip Cornelis, the main novelty lies in the reduction to 40% of the rate of slots that must be used, a rate fixed at 80% in the initial regulation and, therefore, temporarily abolished since March.
This 40% threshold was described by Mr Cornelis as the “right balance” between “all or nothing”. The Commission considers this balance to be necessary, since the 80% obligation would still weigh too heavily on the airlines on the one hand, and on the other, the exemption currently in force undermines the competitiveness of the market.
On this point, some MEPs were also surprised that the Commission did not follow the recommendations of the Worldwide Airport Slot Board (WASB), which advocated a temporary 50% rate.
Concerns for workers
Finally, several voices were raised calling for more attention to be paid to the social dimension of the problem.
Clare Daly (GUE/NGL, Ireland), called on the Commission to “deal with the fact” that low-cost carriers such as WizzAir and Ryanair - with “poor employment records” - had lobbied hard against relaxing slot rules.
The Commission is “extremely concerned” about the social issue, Mr Cornelis assured. However, the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) regretted in a statement on the same day that the proposal “ignores the important issue of job losses and the social consequences of this pandemic and the serious lack of sustainable protection [...] for jobs”.
The organisation also invited the Commission not to “just increase the level of traffic in Europe without any social guarantees”.
See the December 2020 proposal: https://bit.ly/3nDKIQv and the March 2020 proposal: http://bit.ly/38QVyem (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)