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The European Commission has launched a fitness check on EU legislation that regulates EU airport capacity and infrastructure in the Single Market. The fitness check includes the following pieces of EU legislation:

• the Slot Regulation (EEC) No 95/93 which regulates airline access to congested airports where not enough capacity is available to satisfy demand;
• the Groundhandling Directive 96/97/EC which covers access to groundhandling services at airports (i.e. the services and facilities required by an aircraft between landing and take-off); and
• the Airport Charges Directive 2009/12/EC which provides a framework for the pricing of access to airport infrastructure and services.

These three legislative acts are key to ensuring that airport capacity and infrastructure can be accessed fairly by all market participants, and that airport infrastructure and services are priced efficiently and transparently.

Although the Commission had already begun preliminary work on revising the Slots Regulation and Airport Charges Directive, as well as evaluating the Groundhandling Directive, the work was put on hold due to several developments that significantly affected the aviation market, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, the Commission opted for a fitness check to also consider recent trends such as market consolidation, capacity challenges, labour shortages, increased competition from non-EU airlines/airports and the need to decarbonise.

CLECAT already was involved in above mentioned consultations around 2020 (please note the position paper on the Slots evaluation and on Groundhandling services at EU airports). CLECAT will prepare a response to the call for evidence from the Commission which will last until 6 June.