Brussels, 24/07/2000 (Agence Europe) - This Tuesday afternoon Commissioner Loyola de Palacio met representatives from the French air traffic controllers unions, confirmed her spokesperson on Monday. One month after the air traffic controllers strike that blocked the French skies last 26 June during the last Transports Council, the Commission intends repeating to the unions that her "single European skies" project does in no way aim for the privatisation of air traffic control in Europe. "It is not a question of privatising air traffic control: it is a case of improving its functioning in collaboration with all the parties concerned and mainly with the controllers themselves, who must be the engine for this change," assured the Commissioner at the beginning of this month while recalling that the unions are associated to the working groups on the single skies established last January.
In the interim report on this issue the Commission proposed paths to reduce the delays to air traffic by emphasising, among others, the training and recruitment of air traffic controllers (see EUROPE of 7 June, p.14). By adopting, during its last session, the report by Robert Atkins, the European Parliament noted on its behalf "the present shortage of controllers, estimated at one thousand in the EU, as well as the absence of investment in the air traffic control systems" and invited the Member States to "progressively establish a liberalised and fully operational market for the supply of air traffic services in the EU and the neighbouring European countries.