EU move forward with mandatory flight-tracking

The European Union (EU) are looking to revive recommendations from French investigators after the crash of an Air France jet in the Atlantic in 2009 and are also acting as a result of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March 2014 while efforts by global regulators and the airline industry to agree on systems to track aircraft have yet to come to fruition.
However there is an element of discord between the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which has imposed a deadline for November 2016 for airlines to install tracking technology, and the European Commission (EC) which is now set to approve plans to mandate flight tracking from take-off to landing on new aircraft from 2018. The problem lies in that ICAO want a mandatory interval of 15 minutes between position reports when aircraft are flying over oceans or remote locations, while the EC wants the frequency to be left flexible. EU member states signed off on the proposed new measures in July so the European Parliament now has until October 27th to make any objections.
It has been made clear that the full technical details with regard to the tracking technology, such as the position update intervals, will be prepared later by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). It has also been mooted that the EASA are more inclined towards a three minute location report interval. However it should be noted that flight tracking will only be mandatory for new aircraft and retrofitting on existing aircraft will not be compulsory.