There are three main reasons why I believe the majority of pilots are members of a professional association. In Europe, events are beginning to undermine these and we must act now to prevent this.

Firstly, in the unlikely event of needing personal representation following an incident, accident or disciplinary event; a professional association can provide both experienced legal advice as well as a collective protection from being made a false "scapegoat". Because the accident or incident can happen anywhere the airline operates, an IFALPA/ECA affiliated association is the only way to access the broadest range of such representation across the world.

Take the recent problem of a Spanish crew in Chad, arrested and detained because the Chad Government questioned the activities of the organisation who had chartered their aircraft. Even in a situation where there was no IFALPA/ECA affiliated pilot association locally, pressure was brought to bear through the network of Member Associations and ECA, and the crew were quickly released. We must continue to strengthen this ability by working together to ensure every professional pilot in the world can be a member of an association in the IFALPA/ECA family.

Secondly, pilots are members of their association for our views to be represented before the regulator and government in order to protect and enhance aviation safety and our professional interests. In Europe, the regulator / legislator which has the greatest bearing on our professional life is now very clearly at the EU level. It is this shift of regulatory power from national to European level which led to the creation of ECA 17 years ago, in order to shape EU legislative/regulatory developments that impact upon the pilots' safety and professional interests.

Being a member of an IFALPA/ECA affiliated association is therefore the ONLY way for a pilot's interests to be represented at this level. ECA has worked tirelessly to ensure that our membership is the broadest and deepest across the continent and later this month we welcome two more national pilot associations as new ECA members. This will mean that over 99% of the professionally organised pilots are members of an affiliated association, making our collective message the most coherent.

Lastly, but often of the most immediate concern, pilots are members of an association for our interests to be represented with the employer, to protect and develop our pay and conditions of employment. But the recent explosion of transnational airlines employing multiple groups of pilots in different countries and jurisdictions is beginning to seriously undermine our collective strength.

The result is that some pilot groups are questioning the value of remaining part of the nationally organised family of associations. This undermines our unity and so weakens our ability to provide for each other all three of these services. In a growing number of airlines, the excuse of different employment laws applied in a variety of ways by different European countries is being used to divide and rule.

British Airways pilots are just the latest to be faced with the direct threat of a second seniority list in an alter ego airline. The recently announced BA subsidiary airline, BA OpenSkies, initially based in Paris and Brussels intends to recruit to a second seniority list. This would deny the opportunities of this growth to current BA pilots, deny current opportunities within BA to the BA OpenSkies pilots and crucially, allow BA to generate competition between the two groups for future opportunities - potentially playing one pilot group against the other.

At the ECA Conference later this month, all ECA MAs will be able to discuss these crucial long term issues. We must act now to retain our unity. Unity is the strength on which we have helped build a strong and vibrant industry, unity is the strength which has enabled us to contribute to a fantastically safe and secure industry, and unity is the strength which others recognise and respect when professional pilots' interests are at stake. We will act - because UNITY is our STRENGTH.