Assessing the airport ecosystem : which way forward?

Aviation is crucial for Europe's mobility, connectivity and competitiveness. With over 900 million air passengers travelling to, from and within the European Union each year, Europe makes up a third of the global aviation market. Liberalisation of the internal aviation market has been a major EU success enabling significant growth in the sector and delivering benefits to consumers. It has supported EU competitiveness globally. At the same time, there have also been unintended environmental impacts in terms of CO2 emissions, pollution and noise. The Commission's Smart and Sustainable Mobility Strategy has the aim of developing a resilient, competitive and sustainable transport sector that can deliver affordable connectivity to all EU regions. This is against the background of an aviation market that has been substantially changing in recent years with more pressing and new challenges, such as increasing capacity constraints, evolving market power, consolidation of the air services sector and the strategic aims of enhancing sustainability, digitalisation and resilience.