PURPOSE: conclusion, on behalf of the European Union, of Amendment 1 to the Memorandum of Cooperation NAT-I-9406 between the Union and of the United States.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: Council may adopt the act only if Parliament has given its consent to the act.
BACKGROUND: since 2004, the European Union has set out to improve the performance of air traffic management (ATM) in Europe by reforming the way air traffic is managed and organised and also by modernising and harmonising the European ATM infrastructure through the Single European Sky (SES) initiative.
Sharing the common goal to develop safer and more efficient air transport, in 2011, the European Union and the United States of America signed the Memorandum of Cooperation between the United States of America and the European Union in civil aviation research and development (MoC).
The cooperative activities carried out so far under the MoC mainly address ATM particularly cooperation in the field of research and development (R&D) between SESAR and NextGen programme managed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Cooperation under the MoC, in particular between SESAR and NextGen, has reached a high level of maturity and has delivered important results in terms of promoting global interoperability of ATM systems. This led the two parties to explore the potential for extending the scope of cooperation to topics relating to the deployment of ATM systems.
On this basis, the Council authorised the Commission on 8 May 2017 to negotiate with the FAA concerning an amendment to the MoC to extend its scope to cover deployment. The Amendment 1 to the Memorandum of Cooperation NAT-I-9406 between the United States of America and the European Union was signed on 13 December 2017, subject to its conclusion at a later date.
CONTENT: the proposed Decision aims to authorise the entry into force of Amendment 1 to the Memorandum of Cooperation NAT-I-9406 signed by the representatives of the Union and of the United States on the basis of a corresponding Council Decision.
The Amendment 1 to the Memorandum of Cooperation extends the scope of cooperation between the Parties to all phases of air traffic management modernisation, including deployment activities, with the goal of ensuring global interoperability and modifies the structure and governance of the Memorandum so as to optimise the implementation and management of the cooperative activities carried out thereunder.
The research, development and validation activities related to the MoC will continue to be planned and monitored by the SESAR Joint Undertaking. The deployment activities will be planned and monitored by the SESAR Deployment Manager under the specific grant agreements signed with the Commission.