Yesterday's industrial action by air-traffic controllers in 10 European countries demonstrated the vulnerability of the continent's congested air space and highlighted the issue of how the system should be reformed. The action was taken in protest against proposals by the European Commission to introduce a "single skies" plan involving a single highway for flights.
The controllers say this will lead to competitive contracting leading to closures, redundancies and privatisation of national air traffic authorities, and sacrificing safety for commercial profit.
As usual, travellers, tourists and businesses throughout Europe were the main victims of the disruption. It was most severe over France, but also affected Spain, Greece, Portugal, Hungary and five other countries and there is every likelihood that it will continue. That is unacceptable and must be condemned.
Those affected were left little wiser about the issues behind yesterday's actions. Professionally, many air-traffic controllers must be impressed by the case for rationalising the system, in which their work is fragmented between some 27 national authorities and 40 air-traffic centres. They have been antagonised by the ideological approach of the Spanish Commissioner, Ms Loyola de Palacio, who favours a thoroughgoing reorganisation involving more competitive contracting, productivity gains, fewer jobs and, if necessary, privatisation of the air-traffic authorities.
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In parallel, she has ambitious proposals for a complete overhaul of the EU's airline industry, with an unsentimental attitude to the survival of smaller state airlines such as Aer Lingus or stop-overs such as Shannon. She says this is the only realistic means to compete with the major US carriers, and makes a strong case that the air-traffic control system needs equivalent change.
So far, the Commission has a less clearcut legal mandate from the Council of Ministers to change the air-traffic control system than under the EU's competition laws to prevent state subsidies of national airlines. Nevertheless, none of the transport ministers openly opposed the Commission's approach at a meeting in Brussels earlier this week, where they agreed to harmonise technical standards for air-traffic control systems.
Yesterday's actions were a warning shot against putative proposals to harmonise the system, rather than against a definite plan. In principle, other means could be found to achieve the same objectives but without the loss of jobs and the decline in safety standards feared by the unions. They should lobby governments and the Commission and publicise their ideas, rather than inflict such counter-productive damage on a vulnerable industry.