Mr. Philip Hughes:

No, it certainly did not come from Brussels. I have to say that but, as I have said, it is great to see the good weather. I thank the committee for the opportunity to discuss issues such as how Eurocontrol can help the member states, particularly Ireland, what the issues are at European level and development.

Going to my first slide, members will see that I have tried to highlight the complexity of the European air traffic management system. It is approximately 11.5 million km. There are 37 air traffic service providers and 17,800 air traffic controllers with approximately 55,000 staff. Some 15.3 million hours are controlled and there are 68 en route facilities, 28 terminal facilities on approach and 525 airports. The reason I highlight this is to indicate the complexity of the co-ordination under the system. It is a very fragmented system, as the members will have seen. Some will be familiar with the push for legislation on a single European sky, which the Commission has been pushing very strongly. The other complexity in this is the war in Ukraine, which has severely affected the amount of capacity with the system and which has shifted the traffic flows. That is just by way of background.

I will move to the next slide. Eurocontrol has a number of functions. First, we do the air traffic management for all of Europe. By that I mean that we do the balancing arrangements between capacity and demand. We do not actually provide air traffic control except at our centre in Maastricht. We are also the platform for civil-military co-operation, which is a much more important issue now with the war in Ukraine and the arrival of fifth-generation aircraft like F-35s. The demand for military airspace is increasing, which makes it more complex. We have an innovation hub where we work on research and development solutions for air traffic management, ATM. We are also the leading technical arm for data from all of the various sources including network management, original equipment manufacturers, OEMs, airports and airspace users. We also have a role in sustainability. That is big service we provide to the Commission, member states and the European institutions. I have already mentioned the Maastricht centre, which covers the upper airspace over the Benelux countries and part of Germany. We have a training centre in Luxembourg and we also do all of the billing for all of the airlines in Europe. Broadly speaking, that is what we do.

The next slide gives an idea of the number of member states. The ones in dark blue are European Union states and those in light blue are member states that are not in the EU. These include the UK, Norway, Turkey, many of the Balkan states, Ukraine and Moldova. We currently have 41 states, and Iceland will be joining as a member on 1 January.

The next slide gives an idea of our main locations. We were happy to welcome some of the committee members to our headquarters in Brussels last year. There they saw our network management operation and some of our research facilities. We have an innovation centre based in Paris, near Brétigny. Then we have the Luxembourg training centre and the Maastricht air traffic control centre. Those are our four main locations. We have in the region of 1,900 staff and a budget of approximately €750 million. That gives the committee a very quick overview of Eurocontrol.

The key thing for our added value is, first, our neutrality. In an industry where many different players are working together, we try to bring the aviation community together to work together. It is a system which is dependent on all of them doing that. We cover multiple domains and the lifecycle of the evolution of technology, so we have a good, in-depth understanding of the ATM environment. We are the ones who provide most of the technical data for the Commission, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, and member states about how things are performing. As stated, the civil-military aspect is important. On expertise and innovation, we need new solutions to overcome some of the problems and challenges to the system that I will talk about later.