(fra kommisjonsforordningen)

(1) Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 establishes the essential requirements for the safe provision of ground handling services and organisations providing them at aerodromes within the scope of that Regulation, as well as provisions for oversight by national competent authorities of those organisations and the ground handling services provided at the Union aerodromes within the scope of that Regulation.

(2) To ensure a high level of civil aviation safety in the Union, and in line with the principle of subsidiarity, this Regulation should reflect the state of the art and best practices in the field of ground handling. It should also take into account the applicable International Civil Aviation Organization Standards and Recommended Practices and worldwide ground handling operation experience, as well as scientific and technical progress in the ground handling domain. Furthermore, in order to ensure an adequate amount of oversight of organisations providing ground handling services, the rules laid down in this Regulations should be proportionate, adjusted to the safety risk of ground handling activities and safety performance of the ground handling organisations and should provide for the necessary flexibility for customised compliance.

(3) The requirements laid down in this Regulation should ensure that Member States conduct a harmonised and consistent oversight of organisations providing ground handling services at Union aerodromes. Therefore, this Regulation should provide the framework for the development and implementation by competent authorities of a management system to encompass the necessary processes, training and qualification of personnel, and procedures for oversight and particularly cooperative oversight of ground handling organisations.

(4) To ensure that the oversight of declaring ground handling organisations is performed in a competent and correct manner and that the results of oversight are properly utilised to improve the safety of the overseen organisations, national competent authorities should ensure that the inspectors conducting oversight are adequately trained and qualified, and have appropriate skills and experience to assess the safety performance of the ground handling organisations under their oversight responsibilities.

(5) To enable efficient use of resources of competent authorities when performing oversight and encourage the harmonisation of ground handling operational processes and procedures by the voluntary use of industry standards, this Regulation should enable Member States to assess together the compliance of the industry standards with Annexes I and II to Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/20 (2).

(6) The oversight activities covering the verification of compliance of ground handling organisations with all the applicable requirements and in accordance with the declaration submitted should be applied in a consistent manner and spanning over the period established in this Regulation. To achieve this, competent authorities should develop and implement an oversight programme to ensure the scope of the oversight is fully covered as planned.

(7) To ensure the implementation of a risk-based oversight, the oversight programme should be partly based on safety data collected from ground handling organisations, which would support competent authorities in having a complete picture of the level of safety for each ground handling organisation subject to oversight. The safety reports should ensure reliable and sufficient information to enable accurate safety analysis.

(8) To ensure that the reporting obligations of ground handling organisations contribute to the improvement of safety in ground handling operations, this Regulation should establish a framework for competent authorities to provide direct and consistent feedback on the reported ground handling events directly to the ground handling organisations and this should be enabled, among others, through the oversight process.

(9) Regulatory measures should prioritise cooperation between national competent authorities in overseeing organisations providing ground handling services at aerodromes located in more than one Member State, to improve resource utilisation and avoid duplication of work and oversight. The national competent authorities involved in the oversight of organisations providing ground handling services at aerodromes located in more than one Member State should share the information necessary for an efficient and harmonised oversight. Good coordination of the entire process and sharing of oversight tasks between the Member States concerned are crucial in ensuring an efficient cooperative oversight. In this sense, national competent authorities involved in the cooperative oversight process should rely on clear rules defining their tasks and have the right tools so that they can share among themselves the results of the oversight activities performed at the aerodromes under their oversight and at the ground handling organisation’s principal place of business, from where it exercises control and applies the management system across all its stations.

(10) The measures provided for in this Regulation are based on Opinion No 01/2024 (3) issued by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (‘the Agency’) in accordance with Article 75(2), points (b) and (c), and Article 76(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1139.

(11) It is necessary to provide sufficient time for the competent authorities to implement the new regulatory framework after the entry into force of this Regulation. Therefore, the application of this Regulation should be deferred to 27 March 2028.

(12) The requirements laid down in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee for the application of common safety rules in the field of civil aviation established by Article 127 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1139,