The civil aviation industry seems under constant attack. Outside events such as volcanic ash, terrorism and pandemics need to be addressed, that is true of all businesses; but it also seems to be in fashion to attack our industry on environmental, tax and regulatory grounds, too. As the recent widespread closure of European airspace clearly demonstrated, civil aviation is a crucial part of the infrastructure of our society. Many parts of the world are not accessible in any other way; many industries could not exist without airline connections and it became clear that even on a temporary basis, the other transport modes are not capable of replacing air transport within Europe. Current issues at European level include the response to the volcanic eruption and ash in the sky; the incredible levels of security regulation which are imposed by law but paid for by the industry; the poorly consulted draft of the new Accident Investigation Regulation; implementation of the emissions trading scheme and further negotiations to liberalise the air transport agreements with other countries. On all of these issues, the European representatives of the airlines, the airports, the air navigation service providers have very similar views to the representatives of the employees. ECA has repeatedly sought to develop relationships with our European counterparts, so that we are better able to quickly develop joint positions. This is important to demonstrate a whole industry view on key issues. We are sometimes successful, as with a recent position on the treatment of safety data (sometimes called ‘just culture’) and most notably in 2000 to solve the problem of a working time directive for mobile staff in civil aviation. I believe there is much more scope for developing a strong, comprehensive industry voice on many more issues; having an impact which exceeds the sum of our individual efforts. This requires us to take a mature view of those issues on which we have disagreements and focus more on those areas where agreement between us has a positive impact. The response to volcanic ash restrictions, security regulation, accident investigation, emissions trading and many of the technical issues addressed by EASA are fertile ground for us to cooperate. ECA is willing to further develop these relationships – it is in the interests of our members, the airline associations’ members, and the EU Institutions that we do. But mostly it is in our industry’s interests.