Access to the groundhandling market at Community airports

The Commission proposes to open up competition of the groundhandling services at Community airports, i.e. all activities carried out in the airport to allow carriers to exercise their air transport activity (ramp handling, cleaning, refuelling, baggage handling etc.). Specifically the proposal: - introduces measures to support liberalisation by organising access to the provision of the various categories of groundhandling services and by giving carriers the right to self-handle; - determines the scope of the measures: as far as self-handling is concerned, they apply in all Community airports open to commercial traffic, and as far as groundhandling for third parties is concerned, they only apply to airports with annual traffic of at least 2 million movements of passengers or 50,000 tonnes of freight; - specifies how the rules of the directive apply to airport managing bodies; - establishes transparency of costs by unbundling groundhandling accounts and by banning all funding which might distort the competition; - defines certain framework measures designed to limit access to the market under a transparent, non-discriminatory selection procedure, due to the specific nature of airport zones and space, capacity, safety and security constraints on airport managing bodies; - makes provision for the creation in each airport of a Users' Committee made up of their representatives; - allows the Member States to make the groundhandling activity of a supplier of groundhandling services conditional upon obtaining the approval of a public authority independent of the airport in order to guarantee safety, security and environmental protection; - gives Member States the right to impose rules needed for the airport to operate properly on service providers and self-handling users; - lays down the principle of reciprocity between the Union and third countries; - requires Member States to organise an internal means of appeal before an independent public authority against decisions taken by their public authorities in the area covered by the directive.�