Mr. Philip Hughes:

It is a matter for member states, from a domestic point of view, how they manage industrial relations. All we can do as Eurocontrol is mitigate the impact of ATC strikes as best we can.

I think there has been a discussion with other members by the member states that in the event of strikes - overflights in some other states would be on a pass through basis - it would be domestic flights that would be impacted. There is a lack of consistency in how that is applied. To be fair to the French, this year was a good year in terms of the strike piece but I think Michael O’Leary’s criticisms remain valid in the sense that Europe at an institutional level needs to address what is required in order to avoid the impact of these particular arrangements. If a member state has a domestic issue internally with its people, that should be a matter for it. Others should not necessarily be penalised. That is my personal view. This was something they tried to address with the Single European Sky legislation, which was passed recently. The Irish Minister at the time, now the Minister for Finance, Deputy Chambers, made a statement to say that he felt the level of ambition was - I cannot remember the exact phrase - underwhelming and needed more. From a political point of view, that is something member states need to consider in terms of how we can do this. We can see that if we have a system that is saturated, the knock-on effects have a very bad impact on everybody.