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.