I will play the Devil’s advocate here: What services are private individuals providing? Also, how is free movement of goods undermined?
Dimme wrote:
Also, how is free movement of goods undermined?
Re-basing an aircraft to Denmark, is movement of goods, is it not?
I take it that the services might be engineering services on non-Danish registered aircraft.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Re-basing an aircraft to Denmark, is movement of goods, is it not?
That is a good question. Why doesn’t the same apply to EU-registered cars then? E.g. I cannot bring a car from Germany to Sweden and keep it on German plates indefinitely.
dublinpilot wrote:
I take it that the services might be engineering services on non-Danish registered aircraft.
Sure you can do that. I don’t think having your airplane in Denmark for service is going to count as basing it there.
As a lawyer with at least some special training in EU law I would think (as in I haven’t done any homework at all on the particular subject and the following does not constitute legal advise) that it could possibly be argued that for an example a company or indidividual moving to Denmark, or Sweden, and wanting to bring along an aircraft to be used in non-commercial operations (ie. business transport flown by a mere PPL holder, or even family commuting back to the home country) might be discouraged by these rules. That could possibly be in breach of the freedom of movement for persons, services as well as goods.
Now, the Commission seems to have a different angle on it, which I don’t quite understand.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Re-basing an aircraft to Denmark, is movement of goods, is it not?
What is the definition of “moving of goods”? I would think it is moving it from A to B, where it is utilized in some way at B. I would also think that there is a commercial element related to the goods. Otherwise it would be moving of personal belongings. A plane used for private transportation is not something I would call moving of goods, if goods refers to the plane itself.
Dimme wrote:
I don’t think having your airplane in Denmark for service is going to count as basing it there.
Sure – but providing hangar space for your aircraft is a service, too. Therefore the hangar rental business in Denmark could be impacted by a restriction that effectively keeps foreign aircraft out of the country.
Dimme wrote:
Why doesn’t the same apply to EU-registered cars then? E.g. I cannot bring a car from Germany to Sweden and keep it on German plates indefinitely.
Because cars (and road traffic in general) is a policy area that is not yet fully harmonized across the EU. (E.g. the regulation for continuous roadworthiness are substantially different across member states). In such areas the member states have the right to issue individual regulations even if those could effectively restrict free movement of goods/services. Again car roadworthiness is a good example: German regulator has the right to define that a car needs to have a technical inspection every 2 years and to establish standards for this technical inspection for all cars based in Germany. As they can not enforce these rules effectively for cars that are foreign registered, they can demand that cars based in Germany (after a certain period of time) need to have German registration.
In aviation, the commission has the opinion, that this area is fully regulated and harmonized by EU regulation and therefore is no room for individual member state legislation. In this case, there is no reason for national registration as airplanes registered elsewhere do fulfill all the regulations in Denmark as well.
That is the reasoning from the EU.
In my opinion for EU-registered airplanes it will be hard to argue against it. For n-regs, however, I’d argue there is a good chance, that Denmark can actually ban them from their country. The most promising line of reasoning might be:
According to the bilateral agreement between the EU and US, the US is responsible for continuous airworthiness management of n-registered airplanes.
However, experience from recent years has shown, that the US are not effectively doing that. Effective enforcement of such airworthiness requirements would require at least some likelihood that a non airworthy plane gets noticed by the respective authorities. To create such likelihood there is the need for unannounced inspection (at least for random samples) (aka. “ramp checks”). As of today, the USA is not performing such ramp checks for n-reg planes in Europe and therefore is not fulfilling its obligations in the bilateral agreement.
In this situation, an individual member state like Denmark has the need and the right to fill in. An effective control, however, would require the member state to know of all the n-registered airplanes in the country. As it would be a major administrative effort to run a “shadow register” for n-reg planes based in Denmark, it is a permissible restriction of FoG/FoS if they require such airplanes to be re-registered to Denmark…
However, experience from recent years has shown, that the US are not effectively doing that. Effective enforcement of such airworthiness requirements would require at least some likelihood that a non airworthy plane gets noticed by the respective authorities. To create such likelihood there is the need for unannounced inspection (at least for random samples) (aka. “ramp checks”). As of today, the USA is not performing such ramp checks for n-reg planes in Europe and therefore is not fulfilling its obligations in the bilateral agreement.
That is widely repeated by the anti N-reg lobby but isn’t true. The FAA is very proactive – much more than EU domestic CAAs – in actioning complaints against engineers who signed off something dodgy.
I know of several A&P/IAs over here who were banned, one DAR too who got banned halfway through a job. One of these is also an EASA66 and they never touched that, while all his FAA authorisations were pulled 
EASA mechanics are practically untouchable, because nearly always they are working within an approved organisation, and an approved organisation “cannot do anything wrong” unless it is rotten from top to bottom.
Ramp checks for airworthiness are practically unknown in Europe. At most you get a paperwork + contraband inspection.
Another thing is that the local CAA does have the power to verify N-reg airworthiness. Witness the various grounded airliners. There was a famous Thai 747 in the UK…
I was not implying what is true or not. Just showing a line of reasoning which could be succesfull for Denmark.
It is a fact that Danish CAA (and most others) are doing ramp checks for Danish airplanes and FAA is not doing such a thing for FAA airplanes.
And yes, the Danish CAA could theoretically do such checks also on n-reg, but to do this, they needed to train their checkers on FAA regulations. They can argue, that making their staff to fully understand and stay current on FAA regulations is too much of a burden and therefore the mandate to locally register is a by far easier remedy of the problem. That is by the way the core difference between n-reg and foreign EASA-reg: For the latter one the the Danish CAA staff does not need to be trained seperately as the requirements are harmonized across EASA-land.
The fact that A&Ps and DARs are banned for misconduct is obviously good, but that also happens in mainland US. In contrast to Denmark (and basically whole Europe), the FAA still does ramp checks in the US. It is (at least for the administrative purpose which we are talking about here) a valid question why the FAA thinks that such checks are required in the US while an equally tight control can be done in Europe w/o such checks.
Again, not implying what is right or wrong but just that there technically exists an opportunity to argue against the commission opinion that everything is covered.
Therefore my expectation (again w/o implying what is right) is that this dispute between the EU and Denmark will be settled in the way that for EU reg Denmark can not insist on local regulation while for n-reg they can.
