European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation
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| Formation | 1960 |
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| Headquarters | Brussels, Belgium |
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Membership
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41 member states |
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Budget
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€ 505.8 million Euros (as of 2014) |
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Employees
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1945 (as of 2014) |
| Website | |
The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, commonly known as Eurocontrol, is an international organisation working to achieve safe and seamless air traffic management across Europe. Founded in 1960, Eurocontrol currently has 41 member states and is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. The organization employs approximately two thousand people and operates with an annual budget in excess of half a billion Euros.
Although Eurocontrol is not an agency of the European Union, the EU has delegated parts of its Single European Sky regulations to Eurocontrol, making it the central organization for coordination and planning of air traffic control for all of Europe. The EU itself is a signatory of Eurocontrol and all EU member states are presently also members of Eurocontrol. The organization works with national authorities, air navigation service providers, civil and military airspace users, airports, and other organisations. Its activities involve all gate-to-gate air navigation service operations: strategic and tactical flow management, controller training, regional control of airspace, safety-proofed technologies and procedures, and collection of air navigation charges.
The Eurocontrol Convention was signed in 1960 and ratified in 1963. Before the Convention entered into force in 1963, there were already indications that the matter of national sovereignty would complicate the full implementation of the organization’s founding mission. The first European plan for a harmonized air traffic control (ATC) system, proposed in 1962, was beset by the refusal of both France and Britain to comply, largely due to reasons closely linked with their national military airspace control. The other four original members (the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) agreed in 1964 to set up a single international air traffic control center to manage their upper airspace, settling in the Dutch city of Maastricht.
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