European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation

EUROCONTROL Centralised Services proposal

On 11 July, the Director General of EUROCONTROL, Mr Frank Brenner, the Director General of DG MOVE at the European Commission, Dr Matthias Ruete, and the Director of Air Transport in DG MOVE, Mr Matthew Baldwin, met to discuss in detail the next steps for EUROCONTROL’s proposal for implementation of Centralised Services.

Centralised Services are an effort to improve cost-efficiency of the European air traffic network by reducing fragmentation and providing a number of services on a pan-European rather than national level.

They fit within the context of the European Commission’s Communication on Single European Sky 2 +, published on 11 June and typically involve handling data. They range from a service for trajectory planning in four dimensions, to support for effectively sharing airspace data in order to optimise civil and military usage.

In March 2013, EUROCONTROL submitted a request for partial funding of the preparatory work for the proposed Centralised Services from the TEN-T 2012 Multi-annual programme. However, in the brochure ‘Proposal for an Implementing Decision on the selection of projects’ published by TEN-T the request was not recommended for funding.

Hence, the Call for Interest for the Centralised Services, originally planned for July, will be postponed until the financial situation has been clarified.

After publication of the TEN-T brochure, EUROCONTROL received a letter from the European Commission in which Dr Ruete reiterates that “the Commission continues to support this proposal strongly, not least because we see the potential for these services to support the implementation of the Single European Sky, including its evolution as proposed under the SES2+ initiative. I am therefore pleased to confirm our willingness to support the further development of the Centralised Services’ concept, ensuring a close connection with the SESAR project in particular, through the appropriate funding instruments and processes.”

In the evaluation compiled by TEN-T, the assessors noted that the overall quality of the proposal was good, but that it required further stakeholder consultation. Since the document was submitted in March 2013, EUROCONTROL has held twelve workshops, with over 600 participants to elaborate further on the proposal.

In his letter, Mr. Ruete also noted “that the nine initially proposed Centralised Services have now reached a much higher degree of maturity and that they are also better understood by stakeholders also thanks to your dedicated workshops.  Of course there are a number of questions where it is clear that stakeholders want to reflect further and we are pleased to continue to work with you on these aspects.”

During the meeting, EUROCONTROL informed the European Commission of its intention to develop the Operational Concepts for the nine Centralised Services and to invite all interested parties to workshops in the mid-September – mid-October 2013 timeframe to evolve these even further.

“Since March 2013, the air navigation service providers of the 39, soon to be 40, EUROCONTROL Member States have been encouraged to establish cooperation between themselves and the manufacturing industry so that they will be ready when the Call for Interest is published,” said Frank Brenner, Director General of EUROCONTROL. “One of the more than 500 questions posed to EUROCONTROL by stakeholders during our workshops was whether we couldn’t provide them with more time to explore the different cooperation options. This delay on the Call for Interest should help and we are looking forward to see even better consortia structures as a result.”