Mr. Michael O'Leary:

In 2001 the European Commission proposed that there would be a single European sky project, in other words moving to the same air traffic control system that America has, which is one system operated by all. The difficulty is it is opposed by every single air traffic control union because it means fewer jobs for them. Therefore, they cannot get national governments to agree to it. In the old days, in the original successful days of the European Union, Peter Sutherland would never have got air travel deregulated and would never have liberalised air travel if it was necessary to wait for the French and German governments to agree to it. However, the European Commission lacks the bottle that the earlier commissions had to challenge the vested interests of the national governments.