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Airport Regions Council

ARC

The Airport Regions Council (ARC) is an association of regional and local authorities across Europe with an international airport situated within or near their territory.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Sophia Kircher (Member of the European Parliament)

12 Nov 2025 · MDMS, SDBTR

Meeting with Kathleen Funchion (Member of the European Parliament)

17 Oct 2024 · Transport/regional airports

Response to ReFuelEU Aviation environmental labelling scheme

5 Oct 2024

Regarding the Flight Emissions Label proposal, Airport Regions Council: . welcomes the initiative of the European Commission . congratulates the efforts of the Commission to engage the aviation and airport stakeholders in the process to prepare the proposal . considers that there are elements of the proposal that, unfortunately, will discourage the aircrafts operators to participate in the initiative. These elements are: . Article 3: . The aircraft operator shall report the following information on its scheduled flights for the two upcoming scheduling periods: respective International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and International Air Transport Association (IATA) codes; (b) aircraft type or types to be used, including the seat capacity per cabin class, the ICAO code, and the copy of its Air Operator Certificate; (c) the estimated number of flights to be operated for each route, accompanied by a detailed justification of the estimation; (d) the scheduling period or periods of the operations; (e) for scheduled flights which are new, or when operating conditions significantly differ from past operations, the following information accompanied by a detailed justification: (i) estimated amount of block aviation fuel; (ii) estimated number of passengers per cabin class; (iii) estimated amount of freight. Regarding this demand of information, ARC considers that as this a very sensitive information, probably one of the most important, of aircraft operators, so there is a big risk of: . aircraft operators dont provide all information because they really dont have it or because dont want to risk the potential illegal dissemination . Article 3: . The Agency may require the aircraft operator to provide any additional information necessary for the estimation of flight emissions and for the issuance of labels We consider that the proposal should concrete the additional information that can be require. The proposal as its defined provides free hands to the Agency and creates uncertainty to the aircraft operators. . Article 7: The Agency shall review, at least on a semi-annual basis, for each aircraft operator for which labels were issued, whether the factors on the basis of which a label was issued for each flight or set of flights operated under the same conditions have changed. Again, the proposal gives free hands to the Agency and uncertainty to aircraft operators. As ARC fully agrees with the Commission that one of the mail goals of the Flight Emissions Label is to provide information to the general public, we consider that the description of the Flight Label Emission Web (Article 8) is too vague stating The public part of the website shall meet the following minimum requirements: . ARC considers that the definition of what and how the website should be can and must be much more precise.
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Response to Revision of the Commission Guidelines on State aid in the aviation sector (airports and airlines)

3 Oct 2024

Regarding this Guidelines Revision, Airport Regions Council: . welcomes the initiative as State aid to airports and airlines is key aspect of the EU Aviation policy . considers that even if its not the concrete goal of the Guidelines Revision and that is a really difficult task, EU should deep on the idea of connectivity, especially of the level of connectivity. ARC considers that all EU citizens should have the same level of connectivity (measured mainly on time) and the public funds (from all administrations) should provide the funds to get via the appropriate transport systems. Therefore, propose the development of a great coordinated work all stakeholders, including cities and regions, in order to get an agreement on this topic what would let afterwords to fix priorities, principles and Guidelines for the investment regarding all modes of transport. The objective difficult of this task should not be a reason not to work on it as its the key of all public policies on transport, including aviation. . asks European Union to consider aviation with the perspective of being a part of the public transport policy. At European level, aviation is playing the role of buses, metros and short distance trains at city and metropolitan level and trains at state level. A role to facilitate economic development, social cohesion and cultural and human exchanges. . shows its surprise for some considerations of the Call of Evidence document. For example, it is possible that at the end of this 3-year extension some regional airports may still remain unprofitable. ARC considers, like all stakeholders of the aviation sector, that for sure there will be no some, if not a lot of regional airports still unprofitable. Therefore, ARC avoids inf favour of the implementation of a long-term solution with, of course, regular revisions. This long-term solution should be based on, at least, some of the following principles: . the importance of the airport to the connectivity of the region . the implementation of the notion that security and safety costs of small airports should be subsidized in great measure to guarantee a common playing field with medium and big airports . the limitation of the control and supervision of European Union and European States to regions and cities regarding the aids to regional airports . the demand to all regions to develop -with a transparent public participation process- a Regional Airport Strategy . the development of a common European mechanism to establish some proportionality of the figures of the aids in order to keep a common playing field . the consideration to support the acquisition of all necessary infrastructures to facilitate the management of the new fuels and the new planes designed to achieve a neutral aviation . the allowance of public services to require air operators to use zero-emission aircraft on publicly-supported PSO routes
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Meeting with Jakop G. Dalunde (Member of the European Parliament)

1 Dec 2022 · Speaker: Airports, airlines and airport regions facing together a green transition

Meeting with Cyrus Engerer (Member of the European Parliament)

21 Jun 2021 · Environmental Impacts of Airports

Meeting with Gaëlle Michelier (Cabinet of Commissioner Adina Vălean), Walter Goetz (Cabinet of Commissioner Adina Vălean)

6 Nov 2020 · Introductory meeting on aviation policy.