Completing the Single Market in Air Services

Abstract

The first package constituted a major breakthrough. For the first time, and no fewer than 30 years after its creation, the European Community had a body of legislation that brought the operation of intra-Community air services within the ambit of the Treaties. Within five years of its adoption, moreover, the enactment of two further packages, in 1990 and 1992 respectively, together with a series of secondary measures, had put in place a regulatory framework designed to create a single market in air services. Although the first package set the industry on a new footing, it would be misleading to construe the broadening and deepening of action after December 1987 as a necessary consequence. The main tendency in the existing literature is indeed to treat the subsequent steps towards full liberalization as a single inexorable process (see, for example, O’Reilly and Stone Sweet 1998a,b).¹ However, such a view understates the differences that still existed within the Council and overlooks the importance of the series of battles that were fought over the five years from 1988 to 1992.²