ANSP's Cooperation in the Western Mediterranean Area

 

I.          Context

A.       The GTMO 5+5

Created in 1995, the GTMO5+5, namely “Groupe des Ministres des Transports de la Méditerranée Occidentale” (Group of Ministries of Transports in Western Mediterranean), is conducted by ministries of transport of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco. GTMO5+5 is meeting each 2 years while its Experts Group meets twice a year.

In its eighth conference held in Lisbon on October 22nd, 2014, the GTMO 5+5 decided "to assess the level of cooperation in the domain of civil aviation in coherence and complementarity with the various regional and sub-regional initiatives such as EUROMED, AEFMP plan and Blue Med, in order to end up in a regional harmonisation of the air navigation".

 

B.        The CETMO demand

Consequently, in its work Program 2014-2016, GTMO+5 secretariat, CETMO (Centre d'Études des Transports pour la Méditerranée Occidentale) introduced an action to provide an “Analysis of regional and sub-regional initiatives concerning civil aviation", in order to identify the potential cooperation activities in the framework of GTMO 5+5 in view of a regional harmonisation of the air navigation.

This request for a report on the status of the situation and the activities was transmitted by CETMO to the concerned countries and France accepted to positively answer, proposing a study to be coordinated by DSNA on behalf of AEFMP.

 

II.       Presentation of the study

A.       The agreed perimeter

AEFMP having an expertise focused on Air Navigation Services Providers, the proposed scope was limited to the cooperation actions benefitting to ANSPs.

This objective was agreed among AEFMP ANSPs and presented on December 2nd 2015 by M. Eric Lieutaud, DSNA’s representative in AEFMP, to the GTMO5+5 experts group. It was confirmed that no financing for the study was to be expected but since the cooperation between ANSPs would benefit in itself from the sharing of the collected data, all the concerned ANSPs (with the exception of Libya), at this moment or later on, confirmed their interest and willingness to be involved, thus well beyond the strict perimeter of AEFMP.

 

B.        The process followed

This proposed perimeter being accepted by CETMO, the study began by an inventory of cooperation actions. In this objective, the collaboration of ICAO, DG MOVE and DG NEAR, EASA, Eurocontrol, SESAR JU, SESAR DM, EUROMED, IATA was first sought and some discussion was conducted with them. This allowed to precise the external contexts and expectations.

Then, a workshop was hosted by CETMO in Barcelona on February 2nd, 2016 with the objective to coordinate the tasks to be undertaken in order to constitute the inventory of realized, in progress and foreseen actions.

After mail exchanges and a consolidation of data provided, a new workshop was organized, hosted by ENNA in Algiers on May 30th and 31st 2016. The aim was to complete, clean and optimize the organization of data provided by all the ANSPs.

Then, new mail exchanges and a webex held on June 22nd, 2016 allowed to prepare the draft conclusions to be validated by all the stakeholders, ANSPs and Member States and resulted in an approved orientation for the study. 

 

C.        Known limits of the analysis

The study developed hereafter is based on volunteering only: this limited of course the investment from each party and, obviously, the result would have taken advantage of a supporting cofounding mechanism.

Consequently, despite the important effort provided by all participating ANSPs, the collected data don’t pretend at any moment to be exhaustive: the use of available material was exploited to the largest extent and the focus of experts has probably been put on the most important, complex and relevant actions.      

Nevertheless, the participating ANSPs consider that the essential concerns and thus opportunity for cooperation are probably covered in this document.

 

III.     Synthesis of the presentation

At the end of this process, all participating ANSPs among which AEFMP’s one, associating for more than fifteen years 5 out of the 10 ANSPs concerned by the study, are convinced of the relevance of the action: it’s has been considered of the highest interest to contribute to this analysis of cooperation status in the Area.

Beyond the willingness to improve their action, they would give due consideration to any support opportunity, being directly or indirectly provided by GTMO5+5 or EC and having for final objective a regional harmonisation of the air navigation in the Western Mediterranean area.

 

The validated version of the study was published and transmitted to CETMO on November 22nd, 2016. The study can be made available on request to the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please provide a brief advisory.

5+5 ANSPs airspaces