EU sluit luchtvaartovereenkomsten met Australië en Nieuw-Zeeland (en)

Today, the Commission announced new EU aviation agreements with Australia and New Zealand. These agreements will make sure that any EU airline can fly to Australia and New Zealand under the existing bilateral agreements between the two countries and EU Member States. Existing air services agreements must not discriminate based on the nationality of the EU carrier. These agreements now need the approval of the Council of Ministers.

Vice-President Jacques Barrot i, in charge of transport, said: "This is an important step in our external aviation policy. All EU airlines must be able to benefit from the existing agreements between EU Member States and Australia and New Zealand. Both countries have expressed an interest in more global negotiations on aviation, to which I intend to react positively".

The agreements (known as "horizontal") will remove the nationality restrictions contained in existing bilateral air services agreements between EU Member States and Australia and New Zealand. These bilateral agreements are incompatible with EU law because they allow only national airlines to operate flights from the EU country concerned. The new agreements allow any EU airline to operate flights between any EU Member State where it has an establishment and the third country concerned. The agreements will not replace the bilateral agreements in place between the EU Member States and Australia and New Zealand respectively, but they will bring them in line with European law.

In the last seven months, the Commission has initialled similar agreements with Chile, Georgia, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Singapore, Morocco and Ukraine, bringing more than 260 bilateral air services agreements in line with European law. The agreements with New Zealand and Australia were initialled on 14 March 2005 and 7 April 2005 respectively, by the Commission and the national authorities. The Commission negotiated based on a mandate given to it by the Council.

The recent Commission Communication on external aviation policy underlined these new agreements as an important first step ( IP/05/288 ). The Commission also proposed more ambitious aviation negotiations between selected countries and the EU. Australia and New Zealand are among the countries where the Commission would consider opening broader negotiations in the future. Such negotiations typically deal with air traffic rights and regulatory issues. Currently the Commission has already received a mandate for the creation of a transatlantic aviation market with the United States, and it has requested negotiation mandates with Russia and China. Vice-President Barrot will soon attend the EU-China Aviation Summit in Beijing (30 June-1 July).

This important development in the aviation sector is based on decisions by the European Court of Justice on the so-called "open skies" cases, delivered on 5 November 2002. In this context, on 5 June 2003 the Council authorised the European Commission to open negotiations with third countries on the replacement of certain provisions in existing bilateral agreements with an EU agreement ("horizontal mandate").