David Learmount/LONDON
THE HEAD OF the European Commission's (EC's) air-safety unit has delivered a stinging attack on the status of the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA), claiming that the body's regulations do not have any force in European Union (EU) law.
The EC view effectively dooms any move towards a establishing a single JAA from the present arrangement of voluntarily co-operating national authorities.
Claude Probst, speaking at a Royal Aeronautical Society meeting in London on the future of European safety regulation, said that as it stands, the JAA does not fit into the EU structure.
He adds that, to have any force in EU law, its regulations (JARs) will have to be rewritten to take account of the principles of the Treaty of Rome. The laws will have to be submitted to the EC and the EU's Parliament like any other legislation, he warns.
A working paper, recently completed by the EC, proposes that the JAA be "...transformed into the new organisation we envisage, capable of dealing effectively with the whole range of European interests in the area of aviation safety".
Probst attacks the JAA, which he calls "an association with an ill-defined statutory basis and rising costs". US Federal Aviation Administration Associate Administrator Tony Broderick has also weighed in, saying: "It is hard to see a capital E in European aviation-safety regulation. Apart from a vague vision of a single authority at some time in the future, there appears to be little consensus...it hampers our ability to co-operate".
Airbus Industrie vice-president for product integrity Wolfgang Didszuhn claims that Europe's air-transport industry is disadvantaged, compared with that of aerospace manufacturers in the USA.
He calls for a statutory single European authority, saying: "There is no target for the formation of a single JAA, and I do not believe we can achieve it unless we set one."
Didszuhn says that the single authority of the future "...must be controlled at the political level by a supervisory board [Governments and EU] and at the technical level by an advisory board [representatives of the aviation profession]".
Source: Flight International
