Air Transport

Head of the Eurocontrol director general's cabinet Jean-Jacques Sauvage says the agency is aware that the situation of air navigation service providers (ANSP) has changed and claims the agency is changing too. One of the main needs for change, he says, is caused by ANSP corporatisation. The service providers in all 34 Eurocontrol member states by the end of 2005 will be corporatised, Sauvage points out, giving them more autonomy from government and more responsibility for costs. He says that Eurocontrol is not the regulator, even if it is mandated to enact some regulation on behalf of the European Commission, and maintains that "they [CANSO] cannot say they are not consulted", but says they want to play a direct part in rulemaking, which they cannot do. Sauvage says that it is up to member states to decide how responsibility for the control of multinational upper airspace areas like MUAC and the Central European Air Traffic Services region shall be exercised.