22 96/67/EC DIRECTIVE REVISIONS
GROUND HANDLING INTERNATIONAL JUNE 2013
Change for the worse?
Are we on the way towards a useless and cumbersome new EU ground handling legislation? Bob Schmitz comments from Brussels.
n April 16 the European Parliament kept alive the Commission proposal for new
EU ground handling rules by voting a whole series of amendments. These will be considered now by the EU Council of Ministers before a second Parliament reading will either reject definitely the whole proposal or accept a conciliation procedure to reach an acceptable compromise. Transport Commissioner S Kallas has called on the Council and Parliament to quickly start negotiations on the airport package to get concrete deliverables on slot, noise and ground handling by the year’s end. Judging by the critical comments on the Parliament vote on ground handling (and taking account of airlines’ strong resistance towards new slot allocation rules), it would be quite an achievement to adopt the Airport Package by the end of this year. If it were the case, the new EU Regulation on ground handling services would enter into force by the end of 2016 and all airports with more than 15m passengers or 200,000 tonnes of freight per year would have to allow a minimum of three handlers for restricted services by the end of 2019. This is, at least, the Parliament’s request which airlines oppose as unacceptable. In practice, those forced to open up further their market would be essentially the airports in Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Berlin- Tegel, Brussels and Lisbon. ACI Europe regrets that the entire debate was dominated by further market opening and social provisions while “crucial questions such as the workable implementation of minimum service quality levels for ground handling, the rôle of airports as ground co-ordinators and the need for airports to be able to subcontract, have not been properly analysed and considered.“ Parliament added minimum quality standards (including maximum waiting times for baggage check-in and delivery, holding minimum stocks of de-icing fluid, and so on) and safeguard clauses for staff transfers to the Commission’s
proposal. Airports wished to be given a freer hand to impose and sanction minimum quality standards while Parliament requests Airport User Committees (and independent authorities in case airports provide handling themselves) to be closely associated. Handlers should be heard in case of any modification or updating of these standards but not at the time of their introduction. The rationale for this limited consultation is difficult to grasp. Indeed, Parliament’s quality expectations are not restricted to handling operations but extend to staff training. “Ambitious and binding minimum standards to ensure the highest quality of education and training for employees,” should be set at EU level. These demands conflict, however, with another amendment: “Enhancing the quality of ground handling services should be done without increasing the administrative burden for ground handling companies. It is therefore important that companies should be allowed to decide on their own general business practices and their human resources policy.”
The staffing question
Concerning worker protection, current Directive 96/67/EC on ground handling lacks any harmonisation of national rules. Parliament goes further than the Commission proposal in asking for binding and more stringent staff transfer rights and protection against dismissals on economic, technical or organisational grounds in case one handler loses its authorisation to the benefit of another or one supplier ceases to provide services to a carrier or a self-handler decides to stop self- handling. “The costs of a redundancy plan for departing staff (who may refuse to be transferred) shall be borne by airlines in proportion to their traffic share handled by the previous supplier.” These wide-ranging staff transfer rules apply only “to ground handling services for which the Member State concerned has limited the number of suppliers.” In other words, many airports will not be
affected. I predict, however, that the Council/Commission will reject the main parts of the staff transfer amendments. Other social amendments include compliance by all handlers, self-handlers and subcontractors with the relevant representative collective agreements at the airports concerned.
I have saved for last one amendment which runs fully counter to Parliament’s policy to strictly control further market liberalisation. The Commission rightly proposed that self-handlers may subcontract only “where they are temporarily unable to perform self- handling due to force majeure.” The same restriction prevails for airport handlers while only independent/airline third-party handlers may subcontract freely by observing, however, a number of conditions. Curiously enough, Parliament deleted the restriction concerning self-handlers. As self- handling will be completely free under the new Regulation (there will no longer be a limit on the number of self-handlers allowed), carriers would be able to easily circumvent any handling restrictions and tender rules. It would signal the end of the cautious market opening and would speed up the application of the following amendment: “the complete liberalisation of the ground handling market should be the ultimate goal.”
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