EU 376/2014 (the document that all the huffing is about) appeared in April 2014, with a date for coming into force of November 2015. Evidently the Daily Mail has only just caught up.
Strangely, although it only affected aviation, it was issued by the EU Commission and not by EASA. As anyone who has not been hibernating for for the last 21 months or so knows, not a single EASA Regulation has yet been amended to reflect the content of EU 376/2014. Various promises about issuing guidance have been made and broken by EASA, in the usual way.
The UK CAA has produced some guidance, the
latest in December 2015.
Apart from the rightness or wrongness of the contents, EU 376/2014 is probably the worst piece of drafting I have ever seen for a document purporting to have a legal force and related to aviation safety regulation. The so-called "preamble" contains no fewer than 55 numbered points, which seem to try to lay down the regulations in an unending series of facile, and often fatuous assertions about aviation safety and occurrence reporting.
I haven't a clue why it was issued by the EU Commission and not EASA; no doubt it's some obscure bureaucratic nonsense that only died-in-the-wool bureaucrats could dream up, let alone understand. The effect is that no-one, including EASA, appears to know whether or not it's in force now, or whether we wait until the various Implementing Regulations are amended.
The UK CAA has tried to help, but it is a ridiculous situation. I have given up trying to work it out.
EASA's enormous, overbearing, unnecessary and wasteful bureaucracy, arrogant incompetence and simple stupidity give me a problem. I believe passionately that the UK should play a leading role in Europe from within; any other course puts us in thrall to the USA and we all know what happens when the chips are down; the USA looks after itself first, at our expense if necessary. And why shouldn't they do that? So it's Europe for me. But then I see the idiocies, extravagance, financial incompetence and waste that exists in the EU Commission and EU Parliament, and I know that we cannot be part of that. So unless Cameron can get them to see what is wrong and put it right, the UK has to walk away, from the EU and EASA.