EASA which initially received the mandate to develop all the regulatory material for airworthiness, gradually gained competence in all fields of aviation: Air Operations, Flight Crew, Maintenance, Training, Aerodromes, and Air Traffic management (ATM).

The field of ATM is probably the most complex one with two coexisting legislative frameworks, the Single European Sky (SES) regulation and the Safety regulation.

In its so called SES 2+ legislative package issued in 2013, the European Commission proposes to merge the technical regulatory dimension of the SES with the EASA framework in order to remove the duplications. SES2+ also introduces a clearer separation between service provision and regulatory activities concerning the various ATM and air navigation services.

We welcome the clarification proposed by the Commission which enables the Agency to become the technical authority on ATM and to play better its role in this domain. Yet, there is still a lot of work to be done by EASA in particular on the Pan-European dimension of ATM, the civil / military cooperation and integration of new technologies which will significantly improve the overall performance of the European air traffic management system.

One of the crucial points will also be to define the funding mechanism for EASA activities in the field of ATM. We need to define a mechanism which would enable EASA to get access to route charges, with the clear understanding that it would result in a net decrease of the cost of such activities to airspace users. I hope the Member States and European Parliament will find an agreement on this subject.