The European Commission is preparing a new Aviation Strategy for Europe at a critical moment for the sector. For ETF, this initiative cannot become another exercise focused solely on market liberalisation and competitiveness at the expense of workers. Instead, it must mark a change of course.
Years of deregulation, cost-driven competition, and insufficient social safeguards have weakened the sector’s resilience, undermined fair competition, and placed increasing pressure on aviation workers. The new strategy therefore represents an opportunity to correct this trajectory and build an aviation industry that is competitive, sustainable, and socially responsible.
ETF is calling on the Commission to place fair competition, quality jobs, and safety at the centre of the new Aviation Strategy before the current challenges become structural and irreversible.
You can download ETF’s full contribution to the Call for Evidence here: Download.
No aviation strategy will serve us if unfair competition and workers’ exhaustion are left out
The 2015 Aviation Strategy promised growth opportunities through ambitious external aviation agreements and further internal liberalisation. That document continued years of European aviation policy focused on market expansion and cost competition, without sufficient social and economic safeguards to preserve fair competition and ensure a socially sustainable sector.
Today, the negative consequences of these policies are clear: EU carriers and hubs have steadily lost market share to third-country competitors; the internal industry has become highly fragmented and unstable, competing aggressively on labour costs rather than on quality, safety, and the sector’s long-term sustainability; outsourcing, subcontracting, and wet leasing have become permanent business models; and workers have ultimately paid the price through lower wages, growing instability, worsening working conditions, failing legal oversight systems, and alarming levels of fatigue and other health and safety risks.
In this context, aviation workers are increasingly leaving the industry and moving to other sectors. At the same time, younger generations are reluctant to enter these highly skilled professions because they are too often associated with precarious contracts, irregular schedules, and declining career prospects. As a result, labour shortages are now affecting almost every aviation profession, including aircrew, ground handling staff, other airport workers, and air traffic management personnel.
The new Aviation Strategy must break with this model. Europe needs a resilient aviation sector built on fair competition, quality jobs, and safety. We therefore urge the Commission to seize the opportunity presented by this new Aviation Strategy and introduce the necessary safeguards to:
- Ensure fair competition between EU companies and third-country operators;
- Strengthen oversight and close regulatory loopholes;
- Tackle abuses linked to subcontracting, including wet leasing;
- Promote investment in recruitment, retention, and quality jobs;
- Ensure workers are involved in technological transition processes;
- Guarantee the protection of safety and fundamental rights across the sector.
This initiative is closely linked to the ongoing revision of the Air Services Regulation. As we have consistently argued, this revision represents a key opportunity for Europe to reshape its aviation industry by addressing many of the issues outlined above, starting with recognising and protecting the human dimension of aviation. This is the first condition for ensuring the sector’s long-term resilience, sustainability, and prosperity.
