It appears that some serious horsetrading will be necessary to push through this week”s draft aviation agreement on open skies between the European Union (EU) and the US.
And despite the EU”s trumpeting of the preliminary report that is due to go forward to the Transport Council meeting of ministers on 22 March, many airlines, most vocally British Airways (BA), have greeted it with deep scepticism.
Indeed, BA chairman, Martin Broughton, pulled no punches when he urged the EU to ”not sell Europe short” but push instead for a new treaty that balanced both sides of the Atlantic debate.
There are several issues that lie at the heart of this seemingly interminable wrangle, including the highly contentious matter of whether or not reciprocal rights could exist to allow both US and EU carriers to operate freely within their opposite domestic markets. Access to the US internal market ” the world”s largest ” by EU airlines is closed, while opportunities for them to fly beyond the US are limited.
”BA supports the Commission”s mandate to negotiate not an open skies deal, but an open aviation area, based on the model of the EU internal aviation market,” said Broughton.
The UK airline also bemoaned the fact that US negotiators had ruled out relaxing the ownership and control of US airlines, by refusing to consider any item that would require Congress” endorsement. ”The negotiators have been left to creatively scrape the barrel by including existing US policy on ownership limits and franchising into the draft agreement,” it said.
Virgin Atlantic is also calling for greater flexibility on both the ownership and liberalisation of the US market. ”They have not really budged on investment in the US,” said Virgin director of communications, Paul Charles, adding: ”And we feel that only full liberalisation will work ” you can”t have a half way house.
”The negotiations need to boldly pursue full liberalisation as that could loosen shackles globally.”
For its part, the EU has decided to remain resolutely above the fray, with a spokesman for European Commission vice president in charge of transport, Jacques Barrot, firmly rebuffing access questions with a straight bat. ”We don”t have any comments on that,” he said, speaking to ABTN from Brussels.
”We are working for all companies in the EU and we have an agreement that we think is the best possible.”