Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it really does matter a great deal to me that I should start by thanking both the rapporteurs, Mr Fava and also Mrs Sanders-ten Holte. I think they have fought splendidly and with commitment, particularly in the final stage, when one sometimes got the impression that only Parliament was left to carry on the fight on this issue, the Commission having thrown in the towel a while back. According to the splendid brochure that was issued in 2002 with a foreword by the Commissioner, ‘the time is ripe’. Then along came the many proposals that, alas, never seem quite to have taken legal effect. It is for that reason that I am a bit wary today of talking in terms of a historic moment or of a culmination. This is at best a start. Let us have no illusions; this is the third time that this House has discussed this topic, and if the public could listen in, they would find it utterly beyond belief, believing as they do that this ought to have been sorted out ages ago. On the ground, we have no borders any more; I can get in the car and drive from Berlin to Paris or from Paris to Rome without undergoing checks. Despite the compelling arguments in favour of its doing so, this situation does not, however, apply in the skies above us, where aircraft fly over borders on a day-to day basis. What is so comic about all this is the lamentable fact that the Council, in March 2002, when it met in Barcelona, came out with an explicit statement, noted a need, and made a demand to the effect that ‘we need a single European sky’, and it was the Council that stonewalled wherever it could, right up to the very end. I put this in such blunt terms simply because I have for a long time been considering whether I can at all vote in favour of the conciliation procedure. As we saw it, there were two central points, the two big issues. We wanted greater safety, and we wanted more efficiency in the air. We were aware that the two were closely interconnected, and that, on the one hand, collaboration and cooperation between civil and military aviation had to be organised, whilst, on the other, we must put an end to fragmentation once and for all. As the brochure so splendidly put it, the patchwork had to become a network. As Mr Fava put it, the fact that there are 41 air traffic control centres in the Member States alone, with a short flight from Brussels to Rome having to pass through seven of them, not only makes for potential dangers, but also provides reasons for unnecessary delays. The Council has spent a long time blocking these central points. I regret having to tell you, Commissioner, that, when the Common Position came back to the committee, it was your representatives who said that the Council may well have taken a conservative position, but that was the only big success we were going to get. If Parliament had not stood so firm, and if the two rapporteurs had not given their all, it would not have been possible to achieve what is at least a beginning, with some degree of cooperation, an agreement, an understanding, a shared conversation between all the users. Nor, moreover, would there have been the clear instruction to the Member States – who, let us recall, have had decades in which to create functional airspace blocks – combined with the declaration, which I saw as crucial, that if nothing changes in the next five years, we must and will make improvements, in which event we cannot allow the Member States to retain competence in this matter. With this in mind – for this was what I saw as essential – I said it would be better to have a bird in the hand at the moment and to make a start, for there was nothing else on offer. Let me make it quite clear, though, that I have not lost sight of the two birds in the bush, and I would ask that all of us in this European Parliament should continue to keep on working hard so that this single airspace in Europe should not be merely a vision, but should indeed, one day, become reality. We need it – whether we get it with the Member States or despite them.

Political group: PPE-DE