Commentary: Single European Sky: Time to Deliver

Next year will be critical for the credibility of the Single Sky project, one of the best examples of where Europe can make a huge difference in the lives of its citizens.

Flights in Europe are still far too expensive. These extra costs are ultimately paid by passengers. And cost-efficiency is just one of several areas where we are weak.

Our colored “traffic light” assessments of how the EU’s 27 member states are progressing in their effort for the Single Sky to become a reality gives me serious cause for concern. We are almost on track to meet our targets, but “almost there” is not enough. There is a genuine risk that we will find ourselves unable to satisfy the rising demands of air travel, which is set to nearly double by 2030.

Capacity, in the air and on the ground, is the key problem.

Our existing airport capacity is now close to the limit of what is acceptable. Our airspace is full of waiting and delayed flights and in the future, many major EU airports are likely to be completely full for extended periods every day.

National fragmentation is putting the whole project at risk. We are still thinking as a collection of national sovereign airspaces rather than as a single, properly coordinated European airspace. The extra costs caused by low efficiency and fragmentation amount to about €4 billion a year—such a waste of money. This also causes substantial extra fuel burn with huge amounts of CO2 emissions, generating more infrastructure charges than are necessary.

European consumers and businesses are the ones who ultimately pick up the bill for this inefficiency. If the member states were able—which they are not at the moment—to meet the EU-wide target for an acceptable delay per flight, more than €900 billion could be saved between next year and 2014 due to fewer and shorter delays.

The accelerated implementation of the Single European Sky is crucial for the European air transport system as a whole—its competitiveness, its growth and its sustainability.

The progress made by our member states shows that we would miss our collective EU targets on the capacity and cost-efficiency of air navigation services for the 2012-14 period by small—but significant—margins that translate into marked financial consequences for airlines and passengers. Several countries meet neither, or only one, of these two performance targets. This is not acceptable.

The time for reflection is over: it’s decision and delivery time. Several of the national performance plans need some serious revising, and quickly, if we are to avoid a technical problem turning into a political headache.

I am following this very closely and there is clearly an issue if there is no delivery at the level that we need. And I will not hesitate to act, especially where there is evidence of non-compliance, because we will not let this project fail—it is too important for Europe.

If the Single European Sky project is to be a success, its different components must be ready on time. Of these, the ones requiring the most attention are the performance scheme and the functional airspace blocks. Integrating these blocks together into a common European airspace is fundamental—they have to be operational as soon as possible, and certainly before the agreed deadline of December 2012. One year remaining is not long enough to get it right, but is still an achievable target.

We owe it to European citizens and businesses to meet their expectations, to protect their existing jobs and to create new ones; to improve aviation’s impact on the environment, to save an estimated €1.2 billion by 2014; and to make Europe’s skies a safer and less congested place to travel as we respond to the demands of increased capacity.

That is what the Single European Sky aims to achieve. For that, we need the 100% commitment of everyone involved.

Failure to deliver is not an option.

Siim Kallas is vice president of the European Commission.