MOSAIC Summer Edito: Welcome Back!

The summer season comes to an end... Traditionally, this short moment of peace preceding September is the moment where one looks back, and prepares for the busy months ahead. So we did. Achievements, values, work to be done...we would have a lot to cover. Allow me to focus on some of them.

MOSAIC has helped us to achieve many things. But the most important one is that it showed without the least possible doubt, that controllers, engineers, and all the staff from the Safety chain, from all over Europe could overcome their differences to stand for one common goal : a public international provider for Air Navigation Services  built on trust, cooperation and mutual understanding. MOSAIC is the living proof that Europe in its most noble dimension, is alive, and kicking. It is the living proof that simple citizens, simple workers can design concrete proposal based on values, shared by all: love of our professions, respect of our missions, permanent commitment to provide what is expected from us: greater Safety and increased performances.

Well before FABEC...
Officially launched two years ago, the MOSAIC concept was in fact designed and established before. Long before FABEC was born, we had already started defining and describing the way a single provider for 7 countries in Europe could be established. Some three years ago, we defined and described a phased implementation, beginning with short term technical cooperation, that would be followed by the creation of an international agency, responsible for the definition of a global strategy and the common definition and perception of charges. All this would lead to the creation of an international public organisation responsible for the provision of ATS over the airspace of seven countries... Rings a bell? The first two phases are being defined as a possible way forward for FABEC...

A certain idea of service
ANS are too serious to be taken away from States. One is free to think that they should not be directly responsible for their provision. One element is crucial though. States are responsible for Safety in their skies. They must retain the ability to exercise that control, in real time.  That idea is rooted at the core of MOSAIC. It presided the whole conception of the single provider as an international public organisation.

A global concept
Unlike any other projects, MOSAIC covers all fields of ANS provision: ANS is human centred, and is likely to remain so for the next decades... A clear indication that, to succeed, any project must carry a strong complete human dimension. Better service, greater quality are possible. They must, however, be associated with benefits for front line actors: staff.

Communication: a unique, and unprecedented effort for associations and trade unions.
MOSAIC is the unique reunion of trade unions and professional association, drawn together by a common desire. In ATM, no trade union, no group has ever put so much effort into such a project. Publications, website, presentations to various key stakeholders,...the MOSAIC group even chose to expose during two consecutive years in the ATC exhibition. Maastricht in 2007, and Amsterdam in 2008. Nothing to sell, just a set of values, and practical ideas to put those ideas into place, along with a forum to discuss them with whoever was interested. But our work, our investments paid off: MOSAIC is well known, and, more important, the values we fight for are being recognised as essential, as values that can be neither ignored nor left aside.

MOSAIC and privatisation.
Some two years ago, DFS privatization was presented as... inevitable. Time went by… M Kohler’s decision marked a pause, put at use by our members to highlight the dangers of that choice...Unlikely as it was when we began voicing concern, it is by now widely recognised that privatization of the German provider would be most counterproductive especially in the FABEC framework.  An obvious statement, not lost on MOSAIC members, who have always insisted that Germany cannot be excluded from the construction of a single public provider for central Europe: "However counter-productive, the privatisation of any services of the concerned ANSP’s would prove, all members of the MOSAIC group are committed to try and fully integrate all ANSP’s in the MOSAIC area, as long as their integration does not dilute the public nature of the envisaged common ANSP and its common objectives, and therefore threaten MOSAIC’s success as a whole. The ultimate form of co•operation is to integrate all providers in a Public International Organisation."
A glimpse in the future...

The coming weeks will be crucial. An international organisation is going to appear within FABEC, and it should be clear that it will be created as a multinational public entity. What is going to be laid down now will form the foundations of cooperation among some of our countries. You can rely on MOSAIC to be there. Looking forward to seeing you all, in good shape, I wish you, on behalf of all our members a happy end of holiday.

Chairman MOSAIC Group