Single European Sky: provision of air navigation services

PURPOSE : to present a proposal for a Regulation on the provision of Air Navigation Services in the Single European Sky. CONTENT : the objective of the proposal for a Regulation is to define a Community framework for the provision of air navigation services. While the Member States would remain responsible for the status of air navigation service providers, the proposed Regulation would impose the same obligations and offer the same opportunities to all service providers in order to create a genuinely frontier-free airspace within the EU. It consists of the application of three concepts: 1) a system of authorisation for the provision of air navigation services; 2) other services: meteorological services, search and rescue services and aeronautical services; 3) ancillary services: communication, navigation and surveillance services. To ensure that the services proposed meet the objectives concerning the performance, safety and uniformity of the European airspace as a whole, the Commission is proposing the introduction of a harmonised system of authorisations according to precise specifications. The Member State will be responsible for implementing the system and mutually recognise their authorisations. This would also facilitate cooperation between service providers. Whilst the development of regulatory activities will be at Community level, there should be an effective compliance review mechanism, in particular to supervise the activites of service providers. The legislative proposal leaves compliance review primarily to national authorities. To this end, Member States will have to designate supervisory authorities. However, the measures proposed also ensure that the Community has enforcement ability to deal with cases of European significance to supervise the conduct of compliance review and enforcement at national level. With regard to the provision of services, Member States would continue to be able to designate air traffic control service providers operating the subject to a monopoly on specific functional airspaces; the provision of ancillary services would be open to competition; the service providers would have to publish separate annual accounts for each type of service provided. The Commission proposes amendments, within the context of the common route charges system of Eurocontrol, to the structure of charges for use of airspace. This will add efficiency incentives for service providers and incentives to optimise the capacity of the sytem as a whole for providers and users. Morover, it is important to introduce incentives on investment and management. The incentives are defined in respect of helping supply meet demand through financial rewards and penalties. They shall be devised so as to be equitable between airspace users and service providers, in order to reach a better cooperation amongst them. With regard to financing the increase in air traffic control system capacity, part of the charges paid by the airlines could be used to finance improveents to the system. The Commission will explore this possibility by allocating part ofthese charges to actions to increase this possibility by allocating part of these charges to actions to increase air traffic control system capacity in order to implement projects of common interest between 2002 and 2005.�