Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let me start with warm thanks to the rapporteur for the good work he has done and for his good cooperation. Commissioner, you once shared with us a vision of how we would in future be able to fly directly from A to B within Europe, thus enabling much better use to be made of capacity, reducing delays to a marked degree, radically minimising safety risks by, in short order, creating a few functional airspace blocks in Europe, and putting an end to the patchwork in the skies above Europe. What we have ended up with is a sort of ‘Single Sky lite’. Politically speaking, it is clear, nothing more could be achieved, and agreement between the Council and Parliament was reached only at the very last minute – quite literally, at five minutes to twelve. As it is the overall result that matters to us, Parliament has moved a long way and has acceded to many of the Council’s wishes and concerns. It has to be said that the Council of Ministers gave us the distinct impression that the national point of view continued to predominate – and that impression remains. The result is that we have flown in the right direction but have landed well short of the runway. Particularly where military-civilian cooperation is concerned, Parliament had to be very careful of national sensitivities and was in fact obliged to abandon the concept of flexible use of airspace. Substantial areas of airspace continue to be barred to any but military traffic. While a direct flight from Rome to Brussels has presented no problems in navigational terms for some time now, it will not be possible in future, which is economic and environmental nonsense. We have in any case made progress in that the Member States have, for the first time, acknowledged that the only way to ensure the safe and efficient use of airspace is for the military and civilian users of it to cooperate, irrespective of how this is to be arranged in future. I cannot, though, do other than agree with Mr Fava when I say that, as regards the functional airspace blocks, which are at the heart of the Single Sky, the result was less than what the facts of the situation demanded, for a real Community solution would have been needed, with the Commission having clear decision-making competence. That, unfortunately, is something we could not get accepted; here too, the Member States still have the last word, but decisive progress has been made in that they are, for the first time, obliged to negotiate about the establishment of cross-border airspace blocks. Moreover, the Commission is to closely monitor developments, review the situation after five years and propose any changes that may be needed to the system; like Mr Schmitt, I hope that it will. To put it in plain language, the Member States can no longer evade their responsibilities, as they did over past decades, now that they are under close observation, and both Parliament and the Commission expect great things of them. To sum up, the outcome may well not be the quantum leap in air transport that we had hoped for and that had been heralded, but we have started to stake out the ground and can look forward to more Europe above the clouds in the future. Turning to the integration of lower airspace that is being contemplated and – if I may go one step further – the creation of a single trans-European airspace, I hope that the topic of flexible airspace use and, of course, of functional airspace blocks can again ... (The President cut off the speaker)

Political group: PSE