Article 15, paragraph 3 of the Maastricht Agreement stipulates that […] any one of the National Contracting Parties, or the Organisation, may […] express its intention to terminate the present Agreement at any time after the expiry of four years from the date of its entry into force.
It goes on to specify that such a termination shall be effective on the expiry of a period of six years from the date of receipt of the notification and that the Party having requested the termination of this Agreement […] shall bear the costs resulting from this termination.
This appears to imply the following:
- The timeline of two to three years proposed by Deloitte seems unrealistic. If EUROCONTROL formally announces the intention to terminate the Maastricht Agreement, it remains valid for another six years.
- The costs associated with closing the centre, including any costs for making staff redundant etc would have to be borne by the Agency. In other words, the 41 Member States would need to share these (presumably) substantial costs.
- To suggest that this can be done without considerable disruption to the services Maastricht UAC provides seems naive. It seems unlikely that staff would readily accept six years of uncertainty. It could result in demotivated staff, many of which could seek employment elsewhere. This would not only compromise ATC but services provided to other units as well as technical validations and implementations for which Maastricht has been a global front-runner for many decades.
- The party that chooses to terminate the agreement does not seem to be in a position to set conditions on whether, to whom and under what conditions the responsibilities for the provision of Air Traffic Services across the airspace of the Four States are transferred. It would be up to responsible states to determine the future setup / institutional model of Maastricht UAC, if any.
It is clear that Deloitte were not held back by any concern of the complex consequences of the suggestion to separate MUAC from the EUROCONTROL organisation, nor of the impossibility of achieving this within 2 or 3 years. If they had bothered to look at the numerous previous studies on the subject, they could have realised the substantial cost increase for the Four States and, ultimately, the airspace users are prohibitive as are the practical implications of such a far reaching decision.
Unfortunately, all this does not mean it cannot happen. Eamonn Brennan is not happy with the increased autonomy that the Four States have negotiated for MUAC. The report incorrectly claims that this approach is not working: it has not even been implemented yet but it is clearly the intention of the Director General’s office to sabotage it in any way. The sensible thing would be to give that new setup a fair chance. Unfortunately, the sensible thing would also have been to not spend €298.500 on a poorly executed and flawed study.