ATM : how to make progress towards an economic regulator?

Improving Air Traffic Management (ATM) performance is the main goal of the Single European Sky (SES) initiative. The EU’s SES legislation has introduced a performance scheme, which defines performance targets in the key performance areas of safety, environment, airspace capacity and cost-efficiency through the adoption of Union-wide performance targets and approval of binding National or Functional Airspace Blocks (FAB)-level performance targets. It is through this scheme that monopoly Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) are currently ‘regulated’ in Europe.To assist the Commission and the national supervisory authorities in the implementation of the performance scheme for air navigation services, the Commission first designated in 2010 the Performance Review Commission of Eurocontrol (PRC) as the Performance Review Body (PRB) of the Single European Sky. Since 2017 the PRB acts as an independent group of experts. The task of the PRB is to monitor the performance of ANSPs and to provide recommendations to the Commission on target setting and monitoring. In February 2019 the PRB published its final recommendations for the Union-wide performance targets in air navigation services for the third reference period (RP3) (2020-2024). These targets relate to the improvement of flight punctuality, encouragement of more efficient flight paths so as to reduce the environmental impact of air traffic, and the cost reduction of service provision to the benefit of airlines and passengers, while ensuring the highest safety standards. Following this recommendation, the Commission’s Implementing Decision (EU) 2019/903 setting the Union-wide performance targets for the ATM network for RP3 was adopted in May 2019.