Air transport safety, civil aviation: prevention of accidents, collect and dissemination of information

This amended proposal relates to the following: - the addition of a reference to the development taking place in the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to show that compatibility with other technical reporting requirements such as those of ICAO's ADREP (Accident/Incident Reporting) system should also be ensured. It should be noted that a representative of ICAO is participating in the ECCAIRS (European Co-ordination Centre for Aviation Incidents Reporting Systems) Steering Committee; - occurrence reporting : in the original proposal, occurrences had to be reported to the competent authority designated by each Member State. The amendment proposed by the Parliament was aiming at reporting the occurrence to the competent authority of the country where the occurrence took place, the competent authority which certified the operator. The proposed wording could have led to multiple reporting of the same occurrence to different authorities, introducing the risk of biasing the analysis by entering several times the same incidents, giving it an undue importance. For this reason, the modified proposal introduces a new paragraph which requires Member States to notify other interested authorities of occurrences entered into the database; - dissemination of information: this question has drawn many comments from the members of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism of the European Parliament. The Commission also received comments from the Association of European Airlines, Airports Council International and European Cockpit Association expressing concerns on this particular subject. For this reason, the Commission welcomed the amendment proposed by the European Parliament which reinforces the conditions attached to the dissemination of information; - the deletion of a paragraph which aimed to protect the persons involved in good faith in an occurrence with the only limitation that, in the legislation of most of the Member States, the judicial authorities cannot be denied access to any information in the context of an inquiry; - the protection of reporters and the information they supply; - the two year period to comply with the Directive: this time period seems to be realistic and sufficient to guarantee the earliest possible introduction of a system beneficial for safety.�