A bit of misinformation here so far.
why has the UK not joined Eurocontrol who are the undisputed experts and have decades of experience.?
The UK is a member of Eurocontrol.
It is also a way of moving expensive UK ATCO jobs to a cheaper off-shore provider whilst still enjoying the income stream from some of the world's most expensive route charges.
There's no reason to imagine that ATC will be provided by different organisations or from different sites in the short- to medium-term. In reality it probably just isn't practical to make such changes at this stage.
If the UK is so efficient then why are the Nav charges so high? Why do so many aircraft take lengthy doglegs to shorten UK track mileage to a minimum in order to save Nav charge costs
This is one of the things that FABs are supposed to help to address.
I'm no great fan of some of the things coming from the European Commission but I will take a look at the facts before shooting from the hip. The reason that FABs are being created is because the SES Airspace Regulation says they must be - by the end of 2012. There are grand plans for what FABs can help to achieve - in the medium- to long-term maybe some of these ideas can be achieved with benefits for everyone.... who knows. But no-one can just click their fingers and make everything wonderful - things have to happen one step at a time. FABs are just one of those steps. No doubt at first some FABs will be little more than agreements on paper but more and more European regulations will be focused on FABs in coming years.
But ill-informed scaremongering does not help anyone. Whatever happens - and the European rules will undoubtedly change the way that controllers work in many respects - I doubt that ANSPs and their operational staff are going to have to up sticks etc. in the next few years. Not because of the introduction of FABs anyway!