2022 Volume 2022 Issue 42 Pages 213-
This paper takes a case of the new Flight Time Limitations （FTL） established by European Aviation Safety Agency （EASA） which requires to move shared competences to the EU and examines how the UK has been involved in its legislative process, and whether the UK has made any impact on the final version of FTL. At the same time, the paper confirms how the domestic discussions were settled in case there was a gap between national law and new FTL as EU law.
In 2016, the new FTL mandated for all commercial airlines in the EU. Before that, member states could have applied their own FTL for those provisions that were higher standards than FTL set by the EU. The UK could have maintained all provisions as national law until 2016 and was the only country which has had no domestic dispute nor implementing process of FTL. Therefore, it is possible to view a series of intensive discussions on the transition of competence with the introduction of new FTL.
EASA published the draft papers in 2010 and received feedback from various stakeholders including member states. Civil Aviation Authority （CAA） of the UK has proposed 3 revisions as their feedback, and EASA has reflected some parts of them in the amended papers which responded to those feedback in 2012. And again, EASA collected some more feedback from member states and published the final papers in 2014. The Transport Committee of the House of Common raised 3 concerns and urged the UK government to ask EASA to review them. The UK government did not accept all concerns but requested some amendments to EASA.
After analysing those documents and discussions, it was concluded that EASA has reflected some of the suggestions raised by the UK. Although the result does not indicate that the member states can always affect the legislative process of other shared competence areas but showed that UK has involved in the process and made an impact on the final version of FTL in this case. Also, as the way of filling the gap between national and EU law, it was confirmed to provide alternative interpretation and to request efforts within the government.
