Strasbourg, 10/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - Adopting the report by German Christian Democrat Ingo Schmitt on Tuesday, the European Parliament has reinforced the proposed directive bringing in a Community licence for air traffic controllers (codecision, first reading). This proposal, which comes under the “Single European Sky” legislative package, aims to step up security levels and improve controls of air traffic within the Community territory.
The Parliament, the Member States and the European Commission must ensure that air traffic controllers and flow managers “have sufficient training in security, safety and crisis management issues” to be able to of face crisis situations such as aircraft hijacking or bomb alerts. The Parliament also boosted the linguistic requirements under the proposal: instead of level “4” in the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) competence test suggested by the Commission, it finds that “in certain cases”, the Member States should require level “5” for English and/or the local language. Furthermore, “in exceptional cases” the Member States must be able to bring in national grades or annotations to licences, particularly in order to take account of characteristics which are unique to their air space; but these must be “based on objective arguments, be non-discriminatory, reasonable and transparent” and in no case can they lead to a restriction on the mobility of an air traffic controller.
The Parliament also specifies that the employment law of the host country in which the candidate carries out his or her duties will be the one which applies, in order to avoid social dumping, and that the Member States must harmonise sanctions throughout the Community territory against any infractions committed against the provisions of the directive.