Mr President, Commissioner, the proposed regulations being put to the vote today are the result of an agreement made in conciliation following months of debate and work. On behalf of my group, I abstained on this agreement, but I support the steps forward made from the initial draft. Firstly, after various air disasters, the issue of safety remains the priority for any approach in this field. Therefore, from the start I looked at these reports mainly from the point of view of safety. I had expressed my regret in this House regarding the ideological bias that was placing liberalisation at the heart of the measures proposed. It was a bias that was aiming to make economic issues the regulator for air activity and the main method of improving things. In my view, the agreement reached now has a much more realistic approach. Cooperation between civilian and military air traffic will be promoted, insofar as it is compatible with the sovereignty of the Member States, even though I would have hoped for a more dynamic approach in this area. The airspace blocks will be based on operational or functional requirements, irrespective of national borders, in consultation with Eurocontrol. In the event of a dispute, the Member States will, if they wish, be able to jointly request the opinion of a Single Sky Committee, the body responsible for implementing the plan. Chaired by the representative of the Commission, this committee will be made up of two representatives of each Member State and a representative of Eurocontrol. The agreement allows the Member States the freedom to entrust air monitoring to a public service or a private company. I see these proposals as positive developments. Although there is not the initial plan to dismantle the chain of so-called ancillary services, I nevertheless regret the fact that it was not more clearly recognised that the management of air navigation safety is a chain of actions and services that requires a global approach rather than a piecemeal one. I still regret the fact that Parliament did not wish to retain the amendment that I had tabled on behalf of my group aimed at doubling monitoring mechanisms in order to ensure that operations continue in complete security in the event of a fault. I still think that the absolute rule of obligatory separation of functions between the service providers and the national monitoring authorities does not necessarily take into account the complex realities of decisions in sectors that are so inter-related. I also think that the issue of air traffic control and of everything involved with the regulation and safety of air traffic are tasks that are the responsibility of the public authorities, who should be considered as public services. I have met the operators. I have worked a great deal with the unions on this matter. I wish to thank them and say that their contributions counted towards the positive progress that we have made. I also think that in the future, the points of view of the main people involved, the employees, should be better taken into account. This is one of the conditions necessary in order for other improvements to be made and also for the measures that will be taken in Europe to be effective. You can be sure that my group is determined to contribute to this. This is the reasoning for my vote, aiming to both take into account the progress made and show how much there is left to do. IN THE CHAIR: MR DIMITRAKOPOULOSVice-President

Political group: GUE-NGL