Annual Report 2002—2003 - Air Transport Users Council

conduct discussions on services with the US on behalf of the Community. InNovember 2002, it secured judgements in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) againsteight Member States in respect of provisions in their bilateral air services agreements(ASAs) with the US which the Commission had argued were in breach of Communitylaw. The Commission followed up the judgements by calling on all Member States torenounce their ASA's with the US and to grant the Commission a mandate to negotiate"EU" ASA's with third countries.The House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union conducted an inquiryinto the implications of the ECJ rulings for aviation relations between the EU and theUS. In our evidence to the inquiry, we repeated views we had expressed in responseto a 1998 House of Lords Inquiry to the effect that we believed that Community-levelnegotiations would benefit consumers. Our main proviso in holding this view was thatthe overriding objective for EU negotiators should be a EU-US free-trade area in airtransport, directly comparable with the EU internal aviation market.The Future Development of Air Transport in the United KingdomIn July 2002, the Government published a series of consultation papers on options fordevelopment of airport capacity nationwide to meet demand for air travel for the nextthirty years. The consultations were part of a process of development of a GovernmentWhite Paper on the future of aviation in the UK.The consultation process was delayed by a court ruling that the Government had beenprocedurally wrong in excluding development options for London Gatwick Airport (it haddone so to honour an undertaken given by a previous Government not to sanctiondevelopment of a second runway there before 2019).At the time of writing, we had yet to finalise our submission to the Government, but wewould undoubtedly be calling for new runways in the South East as a matter of urgencyand for the White Paper to take account of the air transport needs of the UK regions.Moreover, we shall need to emphasise the need for interim measures to ensure thatexisting services are maintained pending completion of major new developments.Meanwhile, the House of Commons Transport Select Committee began an inquiry intoaviation, for which the hearings were continuing at the time of writing. The terms ofreference of the inquiry were wide ranging, covering infrastructural, political andeconomic issues. We made a written submission welcoming the inquiry and taking theopportunity to reiterate our existing views on the various issues it covered.18