Brussels, 27/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in the context of an informal trilogue, in Strasbourg on 26 September, the European Parliament and Council were unable to bring their positions any closer on the proposal for a regulation 2005/429 aimed at establishing common rules on air safety (EUROPE 9184). Both parties naturally hope that an agreement will be swiftly reached in first reading. But the problem lies in the financing of air safety measures, imposed after the attacks on New York on 11 September 2001.
We recall that Regulation 2005/429 aims to clarify and simplify provisions on civil aviation safety contained in Regulation 2320/2002 but it does not, any more than the previous regulation, contain any provision on the financing of the new common safety measures foreseen. The Parliament believes it is impossible to revise Regulation 2320/2002 without at least including three principles in the text, EUROPE was told by Paolo Costa (ALDE, Italy), who chairs the Parliament's Committee on Transport and who is rapporteur on the dossier. These three principles are clearly set out in the report by Mr Costa adopted in June by the Parliament: 1) safety measures common to all Member States must be cofinanced by passengers and Member States; 2) all additional safety measures decreed by a Member State will be at the cost of that Member State; and 3) the taxes and charges levied for safety reasons must be used in full transparency to cover safety costs. To date, the Council has been more reticent about the idea of introducing these three principles into the body of the text, proposing at the very most to introduce them into the “whereas”. The Parliament considers such a proposal “unacceptable”, Mr Costa warns.
Anxious to complete the dossier as soon as possible, the Parliament is ready to compromise. If the three principles were to be found in the body of the regulation, measures for implementation of the principles could be found in another proposal to be presented by the Commission in the very near future. “This is already a big step”, Mr Costa says, recalling that, in the 2002 interinstitutional agreement joined to Regulationf 2320/2002, the European Commission undertaook to begin a study “witout delay” on financing safety measures within EU Member States and to submit to the European Parliament and to Council, as appropriate, the results of the study and the proposals arising from it (we would point out that the European Commission published the results of the survey in August 2006: see EUROPE 9246).
Contacts between the two institutions will continue in an attempt to reach agreement.