European Commission
European Commission

From a legal point of view, the “open skies” judgements mean that Member States cannot act in isolation when negotiating international air service agreements; henceforth these services will need to be treated as a subject of common interest in an overall EC context (see also: Communication of the Commission on the consequences of the Court judgements of 5 November 2002 for European air transport policy). This means, in the first instance, that the existing bilateral agreements will need to be adapted in order to bring them into line with Community law. To that end, a new complementarity must be developed between Member States and the Community, failing which everyone - operators in particular - will face uncertainties and legal risks.

From an economic and political point of view, the introduction of an external aviation policy is underpinned by a desire on the part of the EC to move towards greater flexibility, openness and consistency in the area of international civil aviation, based on both bilateral and multilateral actions. More specifically, this involves taking steps to ensure that agreements are not only developed between Member States and third countries but wherever appropriate between the EC and third countries, on the basis of a double and indivisible agenda aimed at:

• creating new economic opportunities by opening up markets and promoting investment opportunities as far as possible. As with the internal market, this approach will produce positive effects not only for the users, who would be the potential beneficiaries of better, more varied and cheaper services, but also for the operators, who would enjoy new opportunities, growing markets and a competitive edge. Lastly, market opening would serve as a catalyst to innovation, thereby benefiting the sector as a whole;
• ensuring fair competition, i.e. promoting regulatory convergence, be it with regard to the economic conditions governing the operation of the markets (implementation of competition regulations, State subsidies or standards more specifically linked to aviation such as reservation systems, ground handling, etc.) or to social, environmental, security and safety reliability.

Such a policy is inspired both by the EC’s aviation successes at an internal level and by its ability to face up to external challenges; both of these aspects are key to explaining the prosperity of the EC’s aviation sector.

The international context also constitutes a clear argument in this direction with the continuous growth of international traffic into the future, coupled with the fact that the EC already occupies a position of importance in the international aviation landscape (see SEC(2005)336). Consequently, the aviation industry - while it may have its own constraints and characteristics – can no longer remain isolated from other industry sectors fully engaged in the global economy. Its assets must be given the opportunity to go international, its competitiveness to grow thanks to competition on a world scale and its services outside the EC to grow in number and quality, all to the maximum advantage of users.

At the internal level, a policy encompassing the full range of economic, social and environmental conditions in the air transport sector is currently in place. By focusing on sustainable competitiveness in the air transport sector, the policy places this sector centrally in the Lisbon process. In parallel with the opening-up of the market, the EC has developed a regulatory framework, for the effective and safe functioning of civil aviation. Attention may be drawn, in particular, to the common rules in civil aviation security (Regulation 300/2008), the creation of the European Aviation Safety Agency (Regulation 1592/2002), or the ambitious air navigation initiative designed to create the Single European Sky (Regulations 549/2004, 550/2004 and 551/2004) and the Single European Sky II.

However, whereas the common commercial policy has enabled the EC to play a key role in the international trade and commerce, up to the present day, the aviation market, although unified through a common transport policy, does not possess an adequate external dimension. Indeed, the success of the internal market and of the aviation sector, in particular, owes as much to its internal achievements as to its external projection (see White paper on the European transport policy). Without the latter, the development of the internal policy and the competitiveness of European industry would be hampered.