Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I too would like to preface what I have to say with a few words of gratitude addressed to both rapporteurs, Mr Fava and Mrs Sanders-ten Holte, taking as I do the view that both reports have been drafted with great care and have also demonstrated a very responsible approach to their subject-matter. Let me also say that I am grateful for their willingness, in preparation for the votes in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, to work together in seeking compromises and ways ahead, in which we largely succeeded. I also wish to thank the Commissioner, who has indeed invested a great deal of commitment in this project, and I do believe that, without her sustained efforts, we might well not have reached the point we have come to today, of being able to complete the first reading of a project of this sort. There is, however, something I would like to add. I was rather surprised, Commissioner, that you take such a critical view of the many amendments that Parliament has adopted, and which I have taken a quick second look at, and raise the prospect of your being unable to accept them. I do think you should take a closer look and see Parliament as the partner you will need if you are to be able to successfully and consistently put the case for this joint project of ours to the Council. We find ourselves today talking about a situation that has long been a reality on the ground. It has, in the meantime, become the norm for goods, just as much as people, to be able to cross the borders at will, at whatever time and in whatever manner. This freedom on the ground must actually have originated in the heavens, as it seems far less problematic to set down borders in the sky than to remove them on earth. Things have turned out differently now, though, and the public, the people who fly frequently, have expectations that are all the greater and all the more pressing; it is they who are telling us to at last get on with politics and sort matters out. It is the fact that the present position is simply unsatisfactory that prompted our desire for a Single Sky. Let me make that clearer by giving some examples. The situation in Europe today is that one out of every four flights is delayed. A proportion of the delays can be attributed to the fact that airspace is overstretched, and it is overstretched because we have this catastrophic situation with a fragmented sky. Every year, 350 000 flying hours are wasted because the direct route goes over military areas which may not be overflown, which means that aircraft have to fly by circuitous routes. We also have the situation today in which there are 41 blocks of airspace in 15 EU Member States. I always like to illustrate that by the example of an airline pilot who, on a flight from Rome to Brussels, has to fly through nine different blocks of airspace, meaning that he has to report in and out nine times. Misunderstandings are of course always possible and linguistic problems can crop up, so if anyone tries to tell me there are no additional potential hazards here, he is off beam. This makes it clear that we must make a long-overdue change here. I see these proposals as likely to give the sky a new architecture, create functional blocks of airspace and thereby ensure that, on the one hand, we increase capacity – which the increase in air traffic makes urgently necessary – and on the other, we enhance safety by minimising potential dangers from the outset, are able to reduce costs and so make flying cheaper and, finally and particularly, that we do the environment a favour by cutting at a stroke the 350 000 unnecessary flying hours to which I have already referred. So we have our eyes on the right objective, but I will also say that I am sure there are a number of points we could subject to critical discussion, and I know that one or other of my fellow-Members of this House has doubts about whether this or that is the right way to go ahead. In the Committee, we tried to add certain things. One I will mention is an industry consultation body, as we felt it was right that both the users and the manufacturers should be more involved in the project, to prevent us coming up with something that later proves unusable, or, on the other hand, from requirements bearing no relation to the products that come on the market. The fact is that, as well as the fragmentation represented by the 41 zones in the sky, Europe is fragmented in the field of technology. I believe that our technologies must also be modernised and harmonised as soon as possible. Like Mr Stockmann, who tabled an amendment on the subject, I would have liked us to go a step further by creating a European supervisory authority and removing this area much more from the nation states. I know that to be, at the moment, a chimera, but my relative youth gives me hope that we will today take the plunge and take an important second step by declaring our desire for a Single European Sky, deciding on the political objective, and then going down the road the Commission has pointed out to us. Thus we may hope that, at some point in the next ten or twenty years, there really will be a Single European Sky with a European supervisory authority, which will of course safeguard national interests. So I ask you to vote for these projects by a large majority.

Political group: PPE-DE