Liberalisation and Globalisation have come under scrutiny in the finance sector recently; and ECA is reacting thoughtfully but aggressively to the same forces at work in civil aviation.
Since 1997, there has been a revolution to the economic regulations governing international air transport in Europe. First, the EU internal market was completely liberalised for the airlines and then following a European Court of Justice ruling in 2002, the Member States were forced to allow liberalisation for the airlines of the international aviation market with the rest of the world. This is now almost complete and has had a profound effect on pilot representation.
ECA was formed by its Member Associations in 1991 to represent professional pilot views to the then active Joint Aviation Authorities' work in unifying the regulations in Europe. Earlier this decade ECA was restructured in recognition of our growth in membership and the birth of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which took the 'Europeanisation' of regulation – including safety regulation – one step further.
As liberalisation has now changed the face of aviation again – this time attacking the fundamental freedoms of workers to 'associate' and collectively bargain their contracts across national borders and jurisdictions; so ECA has re-examined its own structure to ensure all our members (both current and future) are able to exercise their fundamental rights.
At the most recent of the regular ECA Conferences – last February – , which bring together representatives of all 38 countries and 38,600+ professional pilots ECA represents, decisions were taken to
- restructure ECA's technical effort towards EASA;
- bring forward proposals to ensure every professional pilot has access to high quality professional association services;
- to ensure we recruit every professional pilot into the ECA family;
- to streamline ECA's membership and subscription requirements.
