Decision 2023/746 - Criteria and the procedure for establishing the position to be taken on the EU’s behalf within the International Civil Aviation Organization as regards the adoption of, or amendments to, international standards and recommended practices, and the notification of differences with respect to adopted international standards - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 99/7

The Convention on International Civil Aviation, which was signed in Chicago on 7 December 1944 (the ‘Chicago Convention’), entered into force on 4 April 1947. It established the International Civil Aviation Organization (‘ICAO’) and regulates international air transport.

The Member States are Contracting Parties to the Chicago Convention and ICAO Contracting States, while the Union has observer status in certain ICAO bodies.

Pursuant to Article 54(l) of the Chicago Convention, the Council of the ICAO (‘ICAO Council’) can adopt international standards and recommended practices (‘SARPs’) for civil aviation and designate them as Annexes to the Chicago Convention (‘ICAO Annexes’).

Pursuant to Article 90 of the Chicago Convention, any ICAO Annex or any amendment to an ICAO Annex becomes effective within three months after its submission to the ICAO Contracting States, or at the end of such longer period of time as the ICAO Council prescribes, unless in the meantime a majority of ICAO Contracting States register their disapproval. Once they have been adopted by the ICAO Council and have become effective, international standards are binding on all ICAO Contracting States, including all Member States of the Union, in accordance with and within the limits set out in the Chicago Convention, in particular in Articles 37 and 38 thereof.

Pursuant to Article 38 of the Chicago Convention, any ICAO Contracting State which finds it impracticable to comply in all respects with any international standard or to bring its own regulations or practices into full accord with any international standard after amendment of the latter, or which deems it necessary to adopt regulations or practices differing in any particular respect from those established by an international standard, is to give immediate notification to ICAO of the differences between its own regulations or practices and those established by the international standard. In the case of amendments to international standards, any State which does not make the appropriate amendments to its own regulations or practices is to give notice to ICAO within sixty days of the adoption of the amendment to the international standard, or indicate the action which it proposes to take.

The internal rules of the ICAO, in particular those which cause the latest versions of documents for decisions regarding new SARPs or amendments to SARPs to be available to the ICAO Council only late, the deadlines set by the ICAO for ICAO Contracting States to notify differences with respect to international standards, as well as the sheer number of differences in the areas of civil aviation safety, air navigation and air traffic management to be notified each year, make it difficult to establish the position to be taken on the Union’s behalf in a Council Decision based on Article 218(9) Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in a timely manner for new SARPs or amendments to SARPs to be adopted, or for each difference to be notified.

It is therefore appropriate to establish the...