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Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

Social partners

Social dialogue in this sector covers activities involving passenger and freight air transport (both scheduled and non-scheduled) and civil aviation (air crew, ground handling, air traffic management).

Air transport makes a key contribution to the EU economy, as the figures below show:

  • over 120 scheduled airlines
  • over 450 airports
  • 60 air navigation service providers
  • 880m departures from or arrivals at EU airports in 2014

In 2013, EU-licensed airlines directly employed 425 000 people. The total comes to 1.4m if we include:

  • airport operators & ground-handling activities
  • building & repairing aircraft
  • flying schools
  • air transport-related activities performed by travel agencies & regulatory bodies.

If we include all other economic activities carried out at airports (trade, hotels, catering, cargo handling, land transport, public services, etc.) and their combined indirect effects, air transport and airports provide 4.8m jobs. Together, they contribute €300bn to EU GDP (gross domestic product).

Major challenges include:

  • the absence of a global level playing field,
  • the increasingly competitive environment
  • structural changes - the low-cost model & atypical forms of employment
  • the Single European Sky initiative.

Workers' organisations

In the air traffic management field:

Employers' organisations

Key areas

The Committee is currently focusing on:

  • action following the Commission's Aviation Strategy for Europe
  • action following the joint statement on implementation of the Single European Sky initiative and the proposal for a regulation on ground handling services
  • combating violence at work, especially violence against women and third-party violence
  • atypical employment (outsourcing, independent and self-employed workers)
  • how to facilitate transnational collective labour agreements at company level.

Activities and meetings

Check the library entries for this sectoral social dialogue committee.

Achievements/Joint texts

Check the social dialogue texts database