COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC Treaty concerning the common position of the Council on the adoption of a European Parliament and Council directive on occurrence reporting in civil aviation

2000/0343 (COD)

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC Treaty concerning the common position of the Council on the adoption of a European Parliament and Council directive on occurrence reporting in civil aviation

1- BACKGROUND

Date of transmission of the proposal to the EP and the Council (document COM(2000) 847 final - 2000/0343(COD)): // 19 December 2000

Date of the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee: // 12 September 2001

Date of the opinion of the European Parliament on first reading: // 14 June 2001

Date of transmission of the amended proposal: // 26 September 2001

Date of adoption of the common position // 17 June 2002

2- PURPOSE OF THE COMMISSION PROPOSAL

The purpose of the proposal for a directive is to improve air safety by ensuring that safety-critical information is reported, collected, stored, protected and disseminated.

To this end, Member States are required to organise a national system for collecting occurrence reports and participating in an information exchange system making it possible to pool the information gathered.

Provision is made for protecting the confidentiality of the information and the arrangements for disseminating it.

The sole objective of the occurrence reports is to prevent future accidents and incidents and not to determine fault or responsibility.

3- COMMENTS ON THE COMMON POSITION

3.1. General comments on the common position

The Council unanimously adopted a large number of amendments to the Commission proposal. Some of them are mainly intended to clarify the text. The objectives of the Commission's initial proposal have generally been maintained, except for one which is mentioned below.

3.2. Action taken on Parliament's amendments

At its plenary session of 14 June 2001, the European Parliament approved the proposal for a European Parliament and Council directive on occurrence reporting in civil aviation submitted by the Commission subject to a number of amendments.

Of the ten amendments adopted by Parliament, the Commission accepted seven in their entirety and one in part, proposing to amend its formulation while respecting the spirit of the amendment. The text examined by the Council was that of the amended Commission proposal which already took account of Parliament's amendments. The common position therefore also takes into account to a large extent the comments made by the European Parliament on first reading.

3.3. New provisions introduced by the Council and the Commission's opinion on them

The amendments below are the main ones introduced by the Council in its common position:

* Article 1 - objective: simplified wording, does not affect the scope of the objective of the directive;

* Article 2 - definition: former Article 3, adapted to the changes to the text;

* Article 3 - scope: former Article 2, simplified wording also affecting Articles 2 and 4 and temporary exclusion of Gibraltar;

* Article 4 - mandatory reporting: adjustment of the drafting to take account, among other things, of certain operational trends (e.g. leasing);

* Article 5 - collection and storage of information: amended to give greater flexibility in the choice of one or more competent authorities to manage the occurrence reports;

* Article 6 - exchange of information: simplified wording, does not affect the scope of the article;

* Article 7 - dissemination of information: amendment of the wording to bring it more into line with the text of the regulation establishing the European Aviation Safety Agency. Given the extent of the amendments which affect the text of the Commission proposal and one of the amendments by the European Parliament, a joint Council and Commission statement will be issued announcing that additional measures will be taken by the Commission assisted by the committee provided for in Article 9;

* Article 8 - protection of information: simplified wording and deletion of paragraph 3. The Commission regrets the deletion of paragraph 3 which gave a clear political signal about the principle that the occurrence reporter should be regarded as conveying an important positive message for air safety and therefore encouraged to do so without risking any counterproductive sanctions. However, the Commission has agreed to accept this deletion in the knowledge that the spirit of this paragraph is also reflected in the second sentence of Article 1;

* Article 9 - confidential reporting: Article 9 of the amended proposal has been deleted by the Council although it was supported by the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the organisations representing civil aviation personnel. However, the Commission notes that during the discussions many delegations justified their decision by the concern not to cause confusion between mandatory collection of incident reports and voluntary and confidential systems, while declaring themselves in favour of the principle of establishing voluntary and confidential reporting systems. Consequently, the Commission requested the inclusion of the following statement in the Council minutes:

"The Commission recalls the position that it expressed at the Council meeting of 16 October 2001, namely that in view of the importance of confidential reports for a better understanding of human factors which may be involved in the occurrence of air accidents and given the support it has received on this point from the European Parliament and the representatives of civil aviation personnel, the Commission is opposed to the deletion of this article."

* Following the deletion of Article 9 the numbering of the subsequent articles has been amended. The text of those articles has not been affected.

4- CONCLUSIONS

Apart from the reservation about the deletion of Article 9, the Commission considers that the text of the common position adopted unanimously by the Council is acceptable in that it respects the essential principles of the original proposal. It also takes account to a large extent as the amendments adopted by Parliament on first reading.