EU Tour - Meeting with DG Trade on Aviation & Aerospace

2016-01-25 | Beijing

DC gave an overview of market access issues in the Aviation and Aerospace industries.

He also appreciated the kick-off of Aviation Project and suggested an early organization of the Steering Committee meeting.

RT gave an update on the recent growth trend in civil aviation section.

With regard to Air Space, he noted that the current way of routing aircraft brought the issue of narrow corridor which directly contributed to delay of domestic as well as international airlines.

On slot distribution, priorities were given to domestic carriers. The process is very opaque as well.

HH noted that this was especially true for cargo carriers who had been given even less priority.

DC: On the construction of airplane, the industry suggested to leverage the CAI so that it can be removed from the Negative List.

China Manufacturing 2025 put great emphasis on domestic aerospace industry and strongly encourage R&D domain. It is recommended that the EU should monitor the specific industry policy closely.

On regional aircraft, he brought up the taxation issue of aircrafts under 25 tons

SR: China Manufacturing 2025 stressed development of domestic industry for long-distance aircraft and IT services for aerospace/aviation industry.

Cyber-security has become a worrying area with the release of National Security Law, Counter-terrorism Law as well as upcoming Cyber-security Law.

RT: There is a general lack of market-oriented approach with regard to airport management with limited choice of service providers.

DG Trade commented that these services fall out of WTO’s coverage and mentioned previous efforts with computer reservation system. RT was asked the exact type of service which Trade should focus its efforts on. RT gave the example of Tier 2 cities’ maintenance handling agents.

PS gave an update on a meeting on 7 Dec. during which progresses were made on Comprehensive Agreement on Aviation and BASA, the safety agreement mirroring the ones EU had with Canada, Brazil, etc.

That concluded the first round of the negotiation and the second round would start on Wednesday 27 Jan, 2016. They the draft will be passed to Council and Member States’ approval.

In the Letter of Intent, Certification and Maintenance were two area of priority.

SB (Aviation Cooperation Project): SB updated the recent exchange EASA had with CAAC (Civil Aviation Administration of China). He said that CAAC was quite supportive with regard to authority to authority dialogue. The following areas were highlighted as priorities in the beginning of the project: Air Traffic Management, Craft Investigation  (CAAC requested information on conflict of interest), Environment, Safety Management/Flight inspection.

CAAC hope to carry out the project as soon as possible.

DC suggested while focusing on the priorities, we shouldn’t forgot about the other points. Therefore, a calendar for implementation as well as strategy on carrying out the project should be outlined. These should be under the responsibilities of the Steering Committee which is expected to happen soon. PS noted that the topics of the Project should be large enough including drone, ATM, etc. At the beginning stage, the two sides should start by building up confidence. DC commented possible topics he sees looming including localization of Air Traffic Management product sector as well as IPR issues. On BASA, he noted that it is important to encourage Chinese side not to freeze everything during the negotiation process.

SR asked which aspect the Chinese side was most interested on environment. SB responded it was mainly on new technology such as bio-fuel.

At the end of the meeting, two sides had a discussion on market access issues in aviation services (CRM and traffic management), regional aircrafts (strong presence of Czech industry) as well as general aviation.