Air transport growth in Europe as seen by the political actors (2000-2006).

This paper presents the results of a study exploring the attention paid to air transport growth by European political groups. The study aimed to answer the question: how do political actors become aware of air transport growth and sustainability issues?. In particular, are there two distinct problems, one being the traffic growth and the other its environmental effects? Or have these two merged into one single issue? When the issues have merged, what topics constitute the different facets of the problem. Six political areas have been chosen to understand the level of this attention and what drives it in different political arenas: the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the European Institutions. In each area, the report analyses 3 possible ways of political action and their interactions. First, the political parties programmes have been studied during and between important election periods. This provides a landscape of how political parties address this issue. Then, parliamentary debates have been explored with attention given to capturing the diversity of related topics used during the legislative processes. This allows understanding of how parliaments translate and discuss these topics. Finally, government projects have been surveyed and analysed to compare adopted public policies. This reveals how governments adopt and negotiate public policies. The study was performed using official political products only, therefore some political actors may be absent from this panorama. The paper is composed of three parts. The first part presents a synthesis of results and compares the position of air transport in the different political areas. The second examines how air transport-related topics have been addressed at the legislative level in the period 2000-2006. The third part analyses the programmes of a sample of political parties in each political area of the study. It provides a representative albeit not exhaustive landscape of what is at stake during elections. In conclusion, it is important to highlight that the paper does not aim at benchmarking countries or parties practices, nor does it evaluate European Institution involvement in Air Transport Policies. Rather, the paper provides a unique perspective into the relative importance of air transport issues in the political arena in different countries in Europe. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.