Brussels, 20/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - The Transport Council on Thursday and Friday 22 and 23 March in Brussels, chaired by German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, will examine Galileo, the draft Open Skies Agreement with the United States and environmental issues. Ministers will try and reach agreement in principle about flights over Siberia and decide on a negotiating mandate for the European Commission for talks with non-EU member states about involvement in cooperation with the Galileo Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) monitoring authority.
Open Skies. The ministers will try and reach political consensus over the draft deal drawn up by European Commission and United States' negotiators on 2 March 2007 (see EUROPE 9379). The United Kingdom's official position is still not known but it does not look likely that the UK will block the deal. Some 40% of transatlantic flights pass through London (mainly Heathrow) and the UK is hoping to win better access to the US market and the postponement of the agreement for a year, but the UK found itself in isolation when German airline Lufthansa decided to stop opposing the deal. The German presidency says it is confident that the necessary agreement will be reached and the Open Skies Agreement can be signed at the 30 April 2007 EU-United States summit in Washington.
Galileo. On Thursday, ministers will discuss progress on the talks over the management contract, identifying problems on both the public and private side and outlining solutions to get the talks out of the current deadlock due to lack of agreement on the signing of a contract to allow the creation of an operational body to run the 26 satellites needed for the full Galileo programme (see EUROPE 9374 and 9387). Ministers will have to decide whether to back the vice-president of the European Commission with responsibility for transport, Jacques Barrot, who, in a letter to the German presidency sent on 15 March 2007 gave the consortium members a 10 May 2007 deadline to set up the operational company to enter negotiations over the signing of an initial contract by 15 September 2007. COREPER will prepare the Council's position on Wednesday. The German presidency wants to help find a solution to the consortium question and give a strong signal to help agreement to be reached. On Thursday, ministers will be deciding on the European Commission's negotiating mandate for talks with countries outside the EU on potentially becoming associate members of cooperation with the GNSS monitoring authority. The European Commission published a draft mandate on 8 December 2006. Council Regulation 1321/2004 on the creation of management structures for EU satellite radio navigation programmes foresees the involvement of non-EU member states (see EUROPE 9324).
Siberian airspace. Ministers will try to agree in principle on the signing and provisional application of the deal reached with the Russians on 24 November 2006 on updating the use of airspace (see EUROPE 9314), foreseeing the scrapping by 2014 of the fees that European airlines Air France, KLM, Finnair, British Airways, Lufthansa, SAS, AA, Alitalia and Virgin Atlantic pay Russia for flying over Northern Siberia and Russia's pledge to provide new airslots free of charge to EU airlines which did not have any in the past.
Sustainable transport and climate protection. On Thursday, ministers will hold a public debate over how to boost energy efficiency and respect for the climate in road, rail, sea and river transport. At a dinner in the evening before the Council, ministers will discuss transport policy and how it meshes with the debate over climate change to try and reach agreement at EU level on strategic guidelines to new forms of transport and new types of fuel. The debate will continue over dinner on Friday with a debate about including civil aviation in the EU carbon trading system, ahead of the June Council meeting.
The European Commission will brief ministers on its 31 January 2007 plan to extend the big trans-European transport networks to countries outside the EU, and its 15 March 2007 progress report on the SESAR Programme (see related article, p. 16).
On the request of Poland and Lithuania, ministers will discuss progress in talks with Russia over unfair tariffs levied on rail freight. (aby)