Directive 2003/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council
of 13 June 2003
on occurrence reporting in civil aviation
THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Article 80(2) thereof,
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission(1),
Having regard to the opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee(2),
Following consultation of the Committee of the Regions,
Acting in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 251 of the Treaty(3), in the light of the joint text approved by the Conciliation Committee on 9 April 2003,
Whereas:
(1) The rate of accidents in civil aviation has remained fairly constant in the last decade; nevertheless there is concern that the forecasted traffic increase could lead to an increase in the number of accidents in the near future.
(2) Council Directive 94/56/EC of 21 November 1994 establishing the fundamental principles governing the investigation of civil aviation accidents and incidents(4), aims at preventing accidents by facilitating the expeditious holding of investigations.
(3) Experience has shown that often before an accident occurs, a number of incidents and numerous other deficiencies have shown the existence of safety hazards.
(4) The improvement of the safety of civil aviation requires a better knowledge of these occurrences to facilitate analysis and trend monitoring in order to initiate corrective action.
(5) When an occurrence involves aircraft registered in a Member State or operated by an undertaking established in a Member State, this occurrence should be reported even when it happened outside the territory of the Community.
(6) Each Member State should set up mandatory reporting systems.
(7) Various categories of personnel working in civil aviation observe occurrences of interest for the prevention of accidents and should therefore report them.
(8) The efficiency of detection of potential hazard would be greatly enhanced by the exchange of information on such occurrences.
(9) Supporting software for the exchange of information between different systems is necessary.
(10) Safety information should be available to entities entrusted with regulating civil aviation safety or investigating accidents and incidents within the Community and, as appropriate, to the people who may learn from them and take or initiate the necessary action to improve safety.
(11) The sensitive nature of safety information is such that the way to ensure its collection is by guaranteeing its confidentiality, the protection of its source and the confidence of the personnel working in civil aviation.
(12) The public should be provided with general information on the level of aviation safety.
(13) Appropriate measures should be put in place to enable the setting up of confidential reporting schemes.
(14) The measures necessary for the implementation of this Directive should be adopted in accordance with Council Decision 1999/468/EC of 28 June 1999 laying down the procedures for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission(5).
(15) Consistency should be ensured with the technical reporting requirements developed by national experts in Eurocontrol and the Joint Aviation Authorities Organisation. The list of reportable occurrences should take into account the work of these two European organisations. Developments in the framework of the International Civil Aviation Organisation should also be taken into account.
(16) Since the objective of the proposed action, namely the improvement of air safety, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States because reporting systems operated by Member States in isolation are less efficient than a coordinated network with exchange of information enabling an earlier identification of possible safety problems, and can, therefore, be better achieved at Community level, the Community may adopt measures in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty. In accordance with the principle of proportionality as set out in that Article, this Directive does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve those objectives,
HAVE ADOPTED THIS DIRECTIVE:
Article 1
Objective
The objective of this Directive is to contribute to the improvement of air safety by ensuring that relevant information on safety is reported, collected, stored, protected and disseminated.
The sole objective of occurrence reporting is the prevention of accidents and incidents and not to attribute blame or liability.
Article 2
Definitions
For the purpose of this Directive:
1. "occurrence" means an operational interruption, defect, fault or other irregular circumstance that has or may have influenced flight safety and that has not resulted in an accident or serious incident, hereinafter referred to as "accident or serious incident", as defined in Article 3(a) and (k) of Directive 94/56/EC;
2. "disidentification" means removing from reports submitted all personal details pertaining to the reporter and technical details which might lead to the identity of the reporter, or of third parties, being inferred from the information.
Article 3
Scope
1. This Directive shall apply to occurrences which endanger or which, if not corrected, would endanger an aircraft, its occupants or any other person. A list of examples of these occurrences appears in Annexes I and II.
2. The Commission may, in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 10(2), decide to amend the Annexes in order to expand upon, or change, the examples.
3. The application of this Directive to the airport of Gibraltar is understood to be without prejudice to the respective legal positions of the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom with regard to the dispute over sovereignty over the territory in which the airport is situated.
4. Application of this Directive to the airport of Gibraltar shall be suspended until the arrangements in the Joint Declaration made by the Foreign Ministers of the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom on 2 December 1987 have come into operation. The Governments of Spain and the United Kingdom will inform the Council of such date of entry into operation.
Article 4
Mandatory reporting
1. Member States shall require that occurrences covered by Article 3 are reported to the competent authorities referred to in Article 5(1) by every person listed below in the exercise of his/her functions:
(a) the operator or commander of a turbine-powered or a public transport aircraft used by an operator for which a Member State ensures safety oversight of operations;
(b) a person who carries on the business of designing, manufacturing, maintaining or modifying a turbine-powered or a public transport aircraft, or any equipment or part thereof, under the oversight of a Member State;
(c) a person who signs a certificate of maintenance review, or of release to service in respect of a turbine-powered or a public transport aircraft, or any equipment or part thereof, under the oversight of a Member State;
(d) a person who performs a function which requires him to be authorised by a Member State as an air traffic controller or as a flight information officer;
(e) a manager of an airport covered by Council Regulation (EEC) No 2408/92 of 23 July 1992 on access for Community air carriers to intra-Community air routes(6);
(f) a person who performs a function connected with the installation, modification, maintenance, repair, overhaul, flight-checking or inspection of air navigation facilities for which a Member State ensures responsibility;
(g) a person who performs a function connected with the ground-handling of aircraft, including fuelling, servicing, loadsheet preparation, loading, de-icing and towing at an airport covered by Regulation (EEC) No 2408/92.
2. Member States may encourage voluntary reporting on occurrences mentioned in Article 3(1) by every person who exercises, in other civil aviation operations, functions similar to those listed in paragraph 1.
Article 5
Collection and storage of information
1. Member States shall designate one or more competent authorities to put in place a mechanism to collect, evaluate, process and store occurrences reported in accordance with Article 4.
The following authorities, working with impartiality, may be entrusted with that responsibility:
(a) the national civil aviation authority; and/or
(b) the investigating body or entity established under Article 6 of Directive 94/56/EC; and/or
(c) any other independent body or entity entrusted with this function.
If a Member State designates more than one body or entity, it shall designate one of these as point of contact for the exchange of information mentioned in Article 6(1).
2. The competent authorities shall store the reports collected in their databases.
3. Accidents and serious incidents shall also be stored in these databases.
Article 6
Exchange of information
1. Member States shall participate in an exchange of information by making all relevant safety-related information stored in the databases mentioned in Article 5(2) available to the competent authorities of the other Member States and the Commission.
The databases shall be compatible with the software described in paragraph 3.
2. The competent authority designated in accordance with Article 5(1) receiving an occurrence report shall enter it into the databases and notify, whenever necessary, the competent authority of the Member State where the occurrence took place, where the aircraft is registered, where the aircraft is manufactured and/or where the operator is certificated.
3. The Commission shall develop specific software for the purpose of this Directive. In so doing, it shall take into account the need for compatibility with existing softwares in the Member States. The competent authorities may use this software for running their own databases.
4. The Commission shall take appropriate measures to facilitate the exchange of information mentioned in paragraph 1 in accordance with the procedure set out in Article 10(2).
Article 7
Dissemination of information
1. Any entity entrusted with regulating civil aviation safety or with investigating civil aviation accidents and incidents within the Community shall have access to information on occurrences collected and exchanged in accordance with Articles 5 and 6 to enable it to draw the safety lessons from the reported occurrences.
2. Without prejudice to the public's right of access to the Commission's documents as laid down in Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents(7), the Commission shall adopt on its own initiative and, in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 10(2), measures for the dissemination to interested parties of the information referred to in paragraph 1 and the associated conditions. These measures, which can be general or individual, shall be based on the need:
- to provide persons and organisations with the information they need to improve civil aviation safety,
- to limit the dissemination of information to what is strictly required for the purpose of its users, in order to ensure appropriate confidentiality of that information.
The decision to disseminate information under this paragraph shall be limited to what is strictly required for the purpose of its user, without prejudice to the provisions of Article 8.
3. Member States may publish at least annually a safety review containing information on the types of occurrences collected by their national mandatory occurrence-reporting system to inform the public of the level of safety in civil aviation. Member States may also publish disidentified reports.
Article 8
Protection of information
1. Member States shall, according to their national legislation, take necessary measures to ensure appropriate confidentiality of the information received by them pursuant to Articles 6(1) and 7(1). They shall use this information solely for the objective of this Directive.
2. Regardless of the type or classification of occurrence and accident or serious incident, names or addresses of individual persons shall never be recorded on the database mentioned in Article 5(2).
3. Without prejudice to the applicable rules of penal law, Member States shall refrain from instituting proceedings in respect of unpremeditated or inadvertent infringements of the law which come to their attention only because they have been reported under the national mandatory occurrence-reporting scheme, except in cases of gross negligence.
4. In accordance with the procedures defined in their national laws and practices, Member States shall ensure that employees who report incidents of which they may have knowledge are not subjected to any prejudice by their employer.
5. This Article shall apply without prejudice to national rules related to access to information by judicial authorities.
Article 9
Voluntary reporting
1. In addition to the system of mandatory reporting established under Articles 4 and 5, Member States may designate one or more bodies or entities to put in place a system of voluntary reporting to collect and analyse information on observed deficiencies in aviation which are not required to be reported under the system of mandatory reporting, but which are perceived by the reporter as an actual or potential hazard.
2. If a Member State chooses to put in place a system of voluntary reporting, it shall establish the conditions for the disidentification, by the one or more bodies or entities that it has designated under paragraph 1, of voluntary reports presented under such system.
3. Member States shall ensure that relevant disidentified safety information deriving from the analysis of confidential reporting is stored and made available to all parties so that it can be used for improving safety in aviation.
Article 10
Committee
1. The Commission shall be assisted by the committee instituted by Article 12 of Council Regulation (EEC) No 3922/91 of 16 December 1991 on the harmonisation of technical requirements and administrative procedures in the field of civil aviation(8).
2. Where reference is made to this paragraph, Articles 5 and 7 of Decision 1999/468/EC shall apply, having regard to the provisions of Article 8 thereof.
The period provided for in Article 5(6) of Decision 1999/468/EC shall be set at three months.
3. The Committee shall adopt its rules of procedure.
Article 11
Implementation
1. Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive before 4 July 2005. They shall forthwith inform the Commission thereof.
When Member States adopt those measures, they shall contain a reference to this Directive or be accompanied by such a reference on the occasion of their official publication. The methods of making such reference shall be laid down by Member States.
2. Member States shall communicate to the Commission the texts of the main provisions of national law which they adopt in the field covered by this Directive.
Article 12
Entry into force
This Directive shall enter into force on the day of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.
Article 13
Addressees
This Directive is addressed to the Member States.
Done at Luxembourg, 13 June 2003.