Mr. Filip Cornelis:

On the traffic light system, clearly the final recommendation adopted by the Council fell somewhere short of the original proposal of the Commission. I believe that everybody considers it to be a first step and acknowledges that further work is needed. One example of where further work is under way is that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, ECDC, are again working together on updating and expanding the health safety guidance from the spring, this time to come up with a testing protocol that could be used in aviation. Of course it will be guidance and not mandatory, but if it is found to be useful by many states, then it can definitely be used in addition to the traffic light system to allow that stability and clarity of rules and mutual recognition that Mr. Brandon correctly referred to. The problem for travel is not only that there are regulatory restrictions but also, clearly, that passengers and the public lack confidence due to the ever-changing rules and the fact that a quarantine is often imposed that defeats the purpose of most air travel.

On the question of funding and public service obligations, we have published guidance that would allow member states to put in place very quickly - in a matter of a week - a public service obligation where it is absolutely essential, for example, to provide essential goods to remote communities. Evidently, there are wider possibilities for public service obligations with proper tender procedure. I will mention one scheme in particular that was put in place by Cyprus. It supports airlines that are willing to reopen routes in a proportional way. Basically, it tries to compensate for the low load factor, which is the low number of passengers onboard those aircraft, and not to overcompensate with public aid. This scheme is also applicable or open to all airlines that wish to make use of it. We believe this is quite an interesting approach to supporting the reopening of routes in a still depressed market. Senator Dooley also referred to loans and equity aid. Clearly there have been cases around the EU where this has been used in smaller or larger amounts for both airlines and airports. I can provide more information to the committee in writing.