Mr Simpson had expressed support for IAOPA's position on the N-register
in the past and it had been hoped he would vote accordingly
Although in the November meeting he is still mocking Goudou for having made EASA into is second hottest e-mail topic after "save the whale", by the 25th May Brian Simpson's position had definitely changed.
The vote itself was relatively uninformed and EASA and the Commission, who in one way or another had convinced the fraction coordinators of the biggest parties (Grosch from the EVP and El Khadraoui from the S&D), were sh1t scared that more MEP's would be aware of the situation and the tables would be turned in a couple of weeks time. That is why they insisted on having a vote immediately (i.e. less than 24 hours) after the resolution was submitted, arguing that a no-vote would require further legislative work between then and april 2012 (nothing short of blackmail of course, especially in view of the fact that "verification by the legal department" and "translating" the document took more than half a year).
I think the good guys misjudged two things:
1) Although the EVP as a whole didn't really care about the matter, Mathieu Grosch had a specific interest. His constituency is the East of Belgium, just 50-odd kilometers from Cologne. That means that he would be in a position to negotiate some
ex-pat &
tax free jobs for his buddies from Goudou and his con-men, in exchange for decisive EVP support. That is why the rest of the EVP needed to be kept in the dark as much as possible, and why he ignored the catastrophic consequences for general aviation, despite him being on the board of a regional airport (in this case Liège EBLG) that needs GA as a supplement to freight and summer charters to balance the books.
2) Somehow they must have negotiated something similar with Simpson and El Khadraoui in the course of February / March of this year, and UK IAOPA wasn't able to leverage its Simpson connection, at least not in the way IAOPA NL was able to debrief and convince Mr. Van Dalen, who I believe is a much more straightforward guy than Brian Simpson, irrespective of political preferences (just look at how he handles the incident with the Austrian MEP after the voting session).
What I take home from this is that democracy in Europe is seriously deficient. Agencies such as EASA are apparently able to hijack an entire community without any accountability. It questions the validity of a model in which the Commission and its agencies act as being the sole initiator of European legislative proposals. The lack of democratic control and the lack of transparency is simply too big to accept.
But even if we were to accept such a model, clearly the current process of NPA CRDs is defunct too. As some of my strongest opponents on this forum have rightly pointed out, essential contributions by competent individuals with a lifelong experience in aviation are systematically studiously ignored. Content wise, there is a clear lack of vision and a complete absence of motivation. And in the rare instances that a hint at motivation is given, it is not supported by factual evidence or proper statistical analysis. The newly published NCO OPS papers hint in the same direction.
The efficiency of the work set-up at EASA can also be questioned: what use are statistical histograms of public responses ? Why is the legislative and rulemaking drafting quality so poor ? Why is EASA's management acting in such an uninformed way (being either incompetent or deceitful, neither being acceptable), seemingly unaware of the scope and consequences of their statements and actions ? Surely € 110 million is too much for what we are getting out of it.
On a different note,
Is it not about time our CAA stood up like the French and copy the French PPL IR proposals?
Given the fact that the Conservative Party was the one promoting the resolution [Yes moderator, this is shameless voting advice], why don't you get in contact with your local conservative UK MP and help them draft legislation that would
1) Implement an equivalent sub FL195 PPL-IR inside UK airspace, including similar grandfathering rights for existing ICAO PPL-IR licence holders
2) Recognise the French IR as such on the simple condition that the French recognize yours. That shouldn't take too long...
so that we can at least fly IFR from Wick to Cannes without EASA bothering us.