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EUROPE NEEDS NEW SAFETY AGENCY

Europe's aerospace industry has pushed consolidation beyond national borders. This we have seen not only in Airbus Industrie but in other European consortia, such as ATR, Panavia and Euromissile, and also in the new multi-national corporations, EADS (European Aeronautics Defence and Space Company), Astrium and BAE Systems.

But the European regulatory structure is hobbling along way behind structural developments in industry. Europe does have the Joint Aviation Authority (JAA) in Hofddorp near Amsterdam, which is often rashly assumed to be a European certification agency. But in fact that description is totally inappropriate. The JAA is nothing more than an association, to which European countries belong and which was established under Dutch law for the purpose of developing common aviation regulations. This process takes a long time, and the JAA does not have any legislative powers. The regulatory documents it produces are recommendations which only acquire the force of law when they are implemented by the individual member states into their national law. The individual member countries can thus decide themselves when and how they will adopt the JAA regulations. For example, to this day Germany has still not implemented JAR-FCL, a set of regulations which specify uniform standards for pilot training in Europe, even though the implementation date originally intended by the JAA was 1 July 1999.

The JAA procedures for developing regulations are complicated, long drawn out and expensive. Nevertheless, the JAA is the only practical avenue available today by which a harmonised set of European aerospace regulations can be promoted at all. Such were the misgivings and latent mistrust of Europe twenty years ago that no European state convinced of this would have agreed to the establishment of a central European certification agency then. No country was mature enough to relinquish its national sovereignty in favour of Europe. And besides, the aviation authorities were a welcome tool for supporting indigenous industry and impeding market access to competitors from other nations.

All this has changed. On 27 September the Commissioners of the European Union met in Brussels and approved the proposed formation of a European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). It is planned to establish the new authority as an EU body, which will give it the authority that this implies. The JAA, which was rather like a toothless tiger, will be merged in EASA.

The global aerospace industry will be relieved by this news, which satisfies one of its key demands. Once EASA is up and running, aerospace products will only need to be certified once, instead of having to obtain separate certification in every EU country, as is the case today, with all the bureaucratic effort that this entails. Manufacturers of large aircraft will be especially pleased with the EU decision, as EASA will save millions in national certification costs and permit market access to countries in which there are only a handful of potential customers which between them have such a small requirement that the effort necessary to obtain certification at present makes it not worth their while.

Having taken so long to get off the ground, EASA is now to be launched at a speed which is remarkable for a bureaucratic organisation: EU Transport Commissioner Loyola De Palacio expects to have set EASA up by the end of 2001. In the meantime the EU Commission still has a number of important decisions to make about EASA. These include the as yet unresolved question of where EASA will be based. German Transport Minister Klimmt suggested Cologne, which in many respects is a sensible suggestion: Cologne is in the middle of Europe, has good transport and telecommunications connections and is relatively inexpensive compared with other metropolises. And what is more, there are several research establishments in the vicinity which could support an aviation authority in its work.

From page 4 of FLUG REVUE 1/2001