EU moves on bilaterals
The EU has written letters (yeah, that'll scare 'em) to seven individual countries, as well as warnings to others, all of them having signed individual bilaterals with the US. See report from Airwise, below:
The European Commission on Wednesday launched legal action against seven member countries to force them to scrap bilateral aviation pacts with the United States.
The EC has now taken action against the 20 EU countries which had signed such deals with Washington.
The Commission argues it has the sole right to conclude a pan-European aviation deal with the US following a 2002 court judgment which condemned eight EU states for signing bilateral pacts with Washington.
It says the bilateral deals limit competition as they only guarantee national airlines traffic rights and therefore prevent carriers from offering the best deal on a transatlantic flight.
The Commission is using this legal precedent to force the other members of the 25 nation bloc with bilateral agreements with the US to rip them up.
The Commission sent warning letters to Spain, IRELAND, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Malta on Wednesday, urging them to scrap the deals.
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Now, I can't imagine the Irish govt being in any hurry to act on this (for a start because three other govts have only been sent second warning letters). However, it does raise a question: if the govt(s) were to go ahead and scrap deals with the US, what would happen? Since the EU has the right to grant permission under Reg 847/04, would it simply be a case of revoking the present agreement and bringing a new, albeit transitional (pending the OAA) agreement into being?
I haven't seen the EU comment on what will happen if/when any of these countries does what the EU says and this is what may be causing the delay; if the effect is that there is no agreement and therefore no flights, then clearly the EU can get stuffed, so it needs to set out what will happen if these countries do comply with its request to end the bilateral agreements.