Emirates’ full statement on new European Commission aviation strategy

Emirates strongly supports open, fair and liberal air transport policy as it is the best way to ensure the interests of consumers, businesses and economies.

Competition related issues are already covered under existing sovereign bilateral air service agreements, as well as existing EU regulation. Therefore we find it interesting that rather than use these tools to address specific grievances, the European Commission is instead looking at a new EU-level policy or updated instrument.

Emirates welcomes any reasonable and sensible definition of the rules that drive fair competition, and we look forward to seeing how such a policy would be drafted and applied to the diverse countries which the EC proposes to cover under its mandate including: the 10 nations of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam), Armenia, China, Kuwait, Mexico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE.

We note with interest, the absence of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the list of nations with which the Commission wishes to have negotiations. Airlines of these countries are state-owned and funded, and operate to and from the EU.

We would also be interested to see what such a policy would mean for state-supported airlines in Europe, as well as existing anti-trust immunised joint ventures between European and non-European carriers and other “protected” commercial arrangements of this nature.

The European Commission has historically championed liberalisation of air access. We believe this, and other consumer-centric policies, should be the continued focus of the European Commission and the mandate it may obtain from Member States.