EASA
After a period of unifying national legislation between all EU member states, under a regime called Joint Aviation Requirements, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, or EASA, was legally established in 2002. EASA is what is known as a designated agency, or an agency of the European Union with the responsibility of aviation safety.
Across its member states, EASA certifies most of the equipment as well as its respective methods of operation, repair and maintenance. It also drafts ‘Opinions‘ for the European Commission to turn into legislative proposals, and makes decisions known as ‘soft law’, regulating how operators implement the Commission’s rules, under the oversight of national aviation authorities.
EASA has a Management Board that is responsible for the definition of the Agency’s priorities, the establishment of the budget, and for monitoring the Agency’s operation. On the 15th of December 2015, the Management Board adopted Decision Number 18-2015, which specifies a standard rulemaking procedure put in place by EASA.
Specifically, if you follow Article 1, the decision “prescribes the procedures for the development and issuing of opinions, certification specifications, acceptable means of compliance and guidance material by the Agency.”
We will follow this document throughout this course.
Rulemaking and the Basic Regulation
This waypoint summarises the Definitions in Article 2, before we move onto the actual rulemaking process. There are a few definitions which I will go through in this waypoint. Let’s start.
The first definition is ‘Rulemaking’. Rulemaking is the development and issuing of rules of the implementation of the Basic Regulation. There are two key words here – Rules, and the Basic Regulation.
Basic Regulation
The ‘Basic Regulation‘ is a European Regulation that sets common civil aviation rules across EU Member States, to establish a high and uniform level of civil aviation safety in the European Union. It is, in a way, the most basic foundation for all aviation regulations. Every implementing regulation pertaining to aviation safety builds on the Basic Regulation.
If you want to learn more on the Basic Regulation, follow this course.
Type of Rules
As you saw in the video, there are four types of Rules: Opinions, Certification Specifications, Acceptable Means of Compliance, and Guidance Material.
Have a go at the “Summary” game below to see if you can remember what you learnt during the video!
Impact Assessments
The last two definitions we want to highlight are Preliminary Impact Assessments, or PIAs, and Regulatory Impact Assessments, or RIAs.
Preliminary Impact Assessments are assessments which are generally done at a rule’s proposal stage,
- to assess the need to address any issue through rulemaking,
- to assess whether there are any alternatives like safety promotion, research or otherwise instead of regulatory measures, and
- to perform a benefit-cost analysis.
Regulatory impact assessments are performed following the rulemaking process, to evaluate the positive and negative impacts of a proposed rule.
So to summarise, Preliminary Impact Assessments happen before a rule is drafted, while Regulatory Impact Assessments happen after.
We will revisit these terms as we go along in this course.
Regulatory Reference:- EASA MB Decision 18-2015 on Rulemaking Procedure