Aviation strategy — European Union Aviation Safety Agency: Initial Appraisal of a European Commission Impact Assessment

Briefing 25-02-2016

The main strengths of the IA are its apparently solid information base, including the two supporting studies, as well as good presentation of stakeholder views and the results of the public consultation throughout. It is, however, unfortunate that the external supporting studies do not appear to be publicly available. The IA would have benefitted from a clearer and more complete presentation of the background information and problem definition, as well as more direct reference to the evidence identified. There appears to be a certain bias towards the preferred options, as far as the way in which options are presented is concerned; the question remains as to whether additional options could have been considered in order to provide a broader choice of genuine alternatives. There are also some technical presentation issues, such as rather inconsistent numbering of the items in some sections. It is striking that no reference whatsoever appears to be made to the existence of a second, separate IA (on drones) which accompanies the same proposal and thus is presumably intended to complete the overall analysis.