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How do politicians develop air transport policy in Europe? |
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High level decisions regarding air transport are made at a political level where the technical and operational issues are put in a broader perspective. Exploring how air transport has been addressed in Europe, it was found that:
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- at a national level, the political decision making process on air transport is made difficult by the fact that it is distributed amongst many bodies; for this reason governments sometimes prefer to follow European initiatives;
- the European institutions, and in particular the European parliament, have extended their competence to air transport and are progressively reshaping its evolution.
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A comparative study in UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the European institutions for the period 2000-2005 explored the issues treated and the political processes by which air transport issues were handled through a survey of:
- the political programmes of a sample of parties at election times as well as during the normal course of the parliament.
- parliamentary debates, covering the diversity of topics discussed in legislative procedures.
- government projects, in order to identify the policies which are being pursued.
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The following table shows the relative importance of air transport themes (by number of documents examined/produced) in the different parliaments studied:
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Concerning sustainability issues, the preferred approaches promoted by the political parties are illustrated in the following graph:
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Finally, exploring the evolution of the political processes used by governments, the study shows that:
- politicians working on air transport are generally non-specialists and the subject is not high on political agendas.
- air transport is structured into issue networks (niches) e.g. on airport noise, on European institutions. There is increasingly an interplay of interest groups, which means that it is impossible for the political actors to be informed of all the factors which are under discussion at any one time.
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For these reasons, the traditional actors no longer have a monopoly on rules; strategic uncertainty is spreading; the regulatory consistency is more difficult to maintain. In the UK, the White Paper discussions and debates have shown the difficulties of focusing on issues related to the evolution of air transport.
European institutions - in particular the European Parliament - have extended their competence over air transport and, while increasingly involving interest groups (industry, public actors, environmentalists), the European institutions are shaping the evolution of this industrial sector.
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Last validation: 10/03/2008
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