5 countries threatened with legal action over the EU’s Single European Sky initiative

The Single European Sky (SES) initiative was launched in 2000 by the European Commission after the airline industry suffered from severe delays to flights in Europe during 1999. A working party was created and, based on the recommendations in its report, at the end of 2001 the Commission produced a legislative package. This package was adopted by the European Parliament and Council in March 2004 and subsequently came into force a month later. Among a number of major concerns was the matter of flights being longer than necessary in terms of distance as a consequence of fragmenting of airspace using international borders. Currently there are over 30,000 flights a day in Europe and figures for 2013, before the airspace boundaries began being restructured, showed that on average flights had to add 42km (26m) based on these geographical borders. That extra mileage not only had a dramatic effect on emissions, but added €5bn (US$5.45bn) to airline costs.
In 2014, 18 countries, including the UK, Italy and Ireland were warned that failure to resolve air corridor reform problems would lead to court action. This week the EU has now warned Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands that they have just two months to complete the implementation of a “functional airspace block” created in 2013 aimed at shortening flight paths through aligning airspace around traffic flows instead of state borders. However the EU Commission’s “Single European Sky” initiative has been met with strong resistance from unions and individual EU states who are reluctant to yield on control and income.