The Commission, specifically the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE), has initiated a fitness check of key airport regulations: the Slot Regulation (Council Regulation No 95/93), the Ground Handling Directive (Council Directive 96/67/EC), and the Airport Charges Directive (2009/12/EC).
The most important one of the three – at least in terms of direct impact on ground workers – is the Ground Handling Directive. The Slot Regulation is all about the allocation of take-off and landing slots at airports, and the Airport Charges Directive sets rules and principles regarding the cost of operating from a specific airport. Both aim to create transparency and non-discriminatory and fair competition in the aviation sector.
The purpose of the Ground Handling Directive is to ensure liberalisation of ground services at airports. The Commission has long believed that liberalisation and competition will improve quality and efficiency in ground handling, while cutting costs and strengthening working conditions. It is supposed to be the high tide that floats all boats.
Reality paints another picture.
Liberalisation of ground services has not delivered the promised improvements. On the contrary, competition, tendering, and near constant cost cutting have led to labour shortages, declining real wages and working conditions, and increasing safety risks. We all know the consequences and the development of the past decades. The state of ground handling is not well. To put it bluntly, the Ground Handling Directive is flawed, and it has failed both the workers and the industry.
If you agree that there are better ways to organise ground handling, to ensure the operational stability and social resilience, please engage and help us make sure that the voice of frontline workers and trade unions is heard.
The best thing we can do right now is to take part in the survey sent out by DG Move. Click on the link: https://surveys.ramboll.com/LinkCollector?key=UW7LVGTQJK31
The survey takes about 30–60 minutes to complete. The deadline is 11 June 2025.
Please feel free to share the link with colleagues and members within your organisation.
The ETF will focus our answers on the Ground Handling Directive. And our core message will be the following:
- The Ground Handling Directive should be more focussed on the safe provision of ground services, creating operational stability, and raising the social conditions for workers. This is more important than the creation of a ground handling market, liberalisation, and regulating free market access.
- Further liberalisation will not add value to ground handling or aviation. Aviation needs more cooperation and less competition.
- Member states should be allowed to limit market access for ground handling service provider if they deem it to be in their national interest to do so; the interest could be related to national security, economy, or the safe provision of essential aviation services.
- Market access should be given to a service provider only after it is deemed that it will further strengthen operational stability, improve safety, and ensure social resilience. A revised Directive must acknowledge the fact that safety, operational excellence and labour conditions are interlinked.
- Social conditionalities should be imposed on tendering of essential services; these should include obligatory transfer of staff with protected wages and working conditions, promotion of quality jobs, collective bargaining agreement coverage, the right to organise, and cooperation on health and safety.
We hope you take the time to answer the survey and help us shape the future of Ground Handling. It would be especially good if you can bring up concrete examples of how liberalisation and competition have not worked as the Commission intended.
