Mr President, we meet at a time when congestion in our skies has never been greater. According to the statistics, the incidence of a 15-minute delay has risen from 12.7% in 1991 to 30.3% in 1999 and is still rising. We are worried not only about the effects that congestion has in terms of inconvenience and the implications for the economic stability of our Union, but we are also concerned first and foremost about threats to safety that may result from it. It is a fact that there is a shortage of air traffic controllers. It is a fact that there has been a lack of investment in air traffic control systems. The demand for air transport is rising almost daily because of cheap fares, the desire of people to travel abroad on holiday and on business or even to be able to take a few days' break at the drop of a hat has added to this pressure. Whilst this pressure has been growing, we owe it to those working in the system to congratulate them and thank them for what they have done. Unfortunately – and this is not entirely their fault – they are not coping with the pressures as well as we would wish: we have all had experience of that only recently, as a result of the delays caused by the strike in France. All this, then, has a detrimental effect upon the mobility of our citizens, and in terms of the economic and financial and social costs for our businesses and a wide variety of other people affected on a day-to-day basis by what is going on. I would like to congratulate Commissioner Palacio for having the initiative to bring this to our committee in the terms that she did, and with the force and verve that she has shown, initially, in setting up the high level group, and also in the leadership that she has given to addressing this problem. What has been produced by the Commission is a major contribution to dealing with the saturation of airspace. The Council of Transport Ministers needs to take a political decision to address this. We cannot put it off any longer. It needs attention now. We need a single sky over a single market but at the same time we have to recognise that individual nation states have views about how these matters should be addressed, particularly insofar as they affect the livelihoods of the workforce and also the use of national airspace for military purposes. Military airspace and its abuse in some countries is something that we also have to address not just in terms of the space that is taken up by military aircraft, but also on occasions the abuse of the civil air corridors by military aircraft not abiding by civil air procedures. This too is an area which need to be addressed. In this report I have proposed – and the committee has broadly accepted – a suggestion that Eurocontrol should be a regulatory body with more powers, more effective sanctions and with the right of appeal for those who are affected by it. By the same token, we think that the provision of air traffic services should be open to liberalisation, subject to what each individual country decides is appropriate for itself. As Members may well know, in the United Kingdom we have addressed the subject by introducing a principle of privatisation. That may be right for us. It may be wrong for others. It is up to individual nation states to decide, but they must decide to address this problem of the division between regulation of their airspace on the one hand and the air service management provision that could be offered by others or other organisations. We do believe that there should be objective and independent criteria on how the system is managed, with incentives offered for the achievers and penalties offered for those who do not meet the desired levels. We think that passengers should be compensated for unjust delays and that their rights in these cases should be clear and well known. But above all we wish Commissioner Palacio, with our support, to press the Council of Ministers and all those associated with this to take urgent decisions. If there is one across-the-board criticism of the report from the industry, it is that perhaps it does not go far or fast enough. This cannot last any longer. We must address this issue now.

Political group: PPE-DE