EU: The Transport Minister, Mr Séamus Brennan, yesterday urged European Union governments to implement as swiftly as possible a new law which will "name and shame" unsafe airlines.
Mr Brennan was speaking after chairing negotiations in Brussels between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers from member-states. They reached agreement on a law governing the safety of aircraft from outside the EU that come into EU airports.
The Minister admitted that the negotiations had been given added urgency by the crash earlier this month of a Flash Air plane at Sharm el-Sheikh, which killed 148 people, 134 of them from France. It emerged after the accident that Flash Air had been banned from Swiss airspace over its poor safety record. EU states have since come under pressure to publish details of which airlines each has banned. Previously, such details were not published - though they were often exchanged between regulators.
The new law will require EU member-states to follow harmonised standards for checking on the safety of non-EU aircraft. It will require them to pass on the results of their checks to the European Commission, the other member-states, and the European Air Safety Agency.
At the insistence of the European Parliament, the Commission will be given the power to extend any safety measures taken by one national authority - such as imposing conditions of operation or a flight ban - to the rest of the EU.
The law requires the Commission to publish an annual report analysing the information received and indicating where there is an increased safety risk to air travellers. This would effectively name and shame the unsafe airlines.
The fatal accident rate per million flights is 0.11 in western Europe but 2.68 in Russia. Airlines in Africa, Asia and South America have rates of more than double the world average.