Major progress has been made with the security campaign following ICAO's letter to its 189 member airports setting out the tamper evident bag specifications and its guidelines for security of the retail supply chain. European

Travel Retail Council President Frank O'Connell talked to Doug Newhouse earlier today.

Real Positives:

– Hopes for a quick agreement to solve the transfer confiscation problem between the EU and the US through open skies or other EU-US talks in next two months;

– a clear commitment from the European Commission that it has every intention of negotiating bi-lateral agreements with third countries;

– one worldwide specification for the tamper evident bag has now been agreed and guidelines forwarded to all 189 ICAO member airports. Airports can begin the process of ordering bags that meet the correct specifications.

INTERVIEW WITH FRANK O'CONNELL BEGINS:

Q: SO WHAT IS YOUR READING OF THE SITUATION NOW?:

Overall I think it is very good. I think we've made a couple of important steps forward in the last few days in this campaign and there is the political side to it and the actual mechanics.

The mechanics are that ICAO has sent out another letter last Friday which is an extension of their letter in December which sets out the specifications for bags and for the security of the supply chain.
While we have some difficulties with both aspects I do think that this represents a significant step forward because a piece of the solution is now on the table and it has now been sent around the world.

There are a couple of aspects to the bag specification that we do not agree with. Primarily there are options in the specification. We don't see why the logo on the bag has to be green and why it couldn't be any other colour as long as it isn't red. Why can't it be blue or black or the colour that people happen to be using, because green is another extra colour and an extra cost. It achieves nothing extra and I think the US and the EU take the same position on this.

But what is more important are the two options that are offered in the specifications for a pocket inside the bag and for hidden messages on the seals around the sides.

First of all we have a problem with the notion of offering options in the first place. You either have a specification or you haven't and neither option offers anything additional to the bag other than cost to us, so we would be urging retailers not to follow those options and to resist any pressure to follow those options.

Neither the EU or the US as we understand it will be asking their industries to do these things and we are going to try and work with the Commission and ICAO in the coming months to try and get then taken out of the specification.

The other piece is the material around the supply chain. I think that what is prescribed by ICAO is much too prescriptive and we'd be working again to try and have those reduced in the months ahead. I think there needs to be much broader principles put in place and the European Commission has exactly the same thinking as we have.
They are drafting broad principles to apply to the supply chain in Europe.

I think the problem with all of those things is that they are not the only way of doing things, therefore the more prescriptive you become the more inflexible the whole thing becomes. Then you create more difficulties for retailers around the world where governments will say ‘That's what it says here and if you don't have that then you are not right’.

The Commission also has the view that there are other ways of doing things. They have to deal here with people who have huge organisations and therefore very elaborate systems and small companies with very simple systems and both are equally entitled to operate and trade at an airport and therefore what ever you put into this has to able to be applied to the whole world.

So again we will have to work on this in the coming months to see if we can get these things amended later.

Focusing on the positive side these guidelines are out and people can now start the production of bags around the world and to start to talk to manufacturers and get the whole process underway.

It is a major step forward and an essential building block to getting towards the whole political thing and creating agreements between countries, because you can't have an agreement without this sort of thing in place.

The security procedures at the airport are clear, they have all been published and the specifications for the tamper evident bags and the broad specifications for supply chains, so all of the various pieces – albeit with a few problems – are all in place.

So the building blocks are all there now to move ahead and that brings us to the political side of the subject. In that regard I think it is also very positive that in the last few days a decision was taken that a mandate clearly is needed for the Commission [to negotiate bi-lateral agreements with third countries on security-Ed].

On Friday evening last they approved the content of that mandate. I wrote to the Commissioner on Friday morning urging a particular route. But the outcome anyway as I understand it – and I haven't got a copy of the mandate – is that it is a good compromise mandate and will allow the process to move forward.

They have started the formal process of getting that approved, so it has now gone into the process of consultation within the Commission among all of the other services and then it has to be approved by all the commissioners.

A couple of sources have said to us now that this could take six to eight weeks and then it moves into the Council process. Again, we have gone through that in some detail with some of the experts and we are targeting to try and have the mandate approved during the German Presidency. We have to have that target or we could be waiting until the Autumn.

It ends at the end of June. So in the meantime we are obviously going to start talking to people in different member states and in fact we already did some of that today. We will also start contacts with Germany because of the presidency and try and get some of the initial ground work done now before the mandate actually comes out and comes to them for approval.

If we can get the mandate out of the Commission process in time then I would be confident that we can get it through the Council and it doesn't have to go to a Transport Council per se. There is a Transport Council Working Group where it goes and then onto to COREPAR – the meeting of all of the permanent representatives and then it can go to any Council meeting and whatever is the most convenient meeting.

So I think that is very, very positive and the importance of it is that it is sending a very clear message that the Commission is deadly serious about reaching agreements with third countries, otherwise they don't need a mandate.

So the fact that they have started the process formally means that they are committed to reaching agreements with third countries and I think that is a major step forward for us.

Q: BUT ISN'T THIS CUTTING IT A BIT FINE TO PROTECT THOSE TRANSFER PASSENGERS WHO ARE GOING ON HOLIDAY THIS SUMMER?

Sure, but that is the reality of politics. I think it is going to be tight but this doesn't have to be sequential. While the mandate is going through the Commission process – and we will obviously be monitoring that – we also intend to start the process of talking to the member states so that when it does go into the Council process it will be ready to run straight away.

But in the meantime there is also no reason why the Commission can't be having informal discussions with countries and it is a question of making sure that countries are doing that. I think this all brings home the importance of countries who haven't already done so to make contact with the Commission.

This is not an application process. It is making contact with them to say that they are interested in making an agreement with the EU. I don't think these countries should be waiting until the mandate is granted. They should be making contact now and getting into the process.

[Nine countries have now formally applied, although O'Connell believes there are probably more who have made their intentions to apply known at different diplomatic and political levels and through various representations in Brussels and elsewhere-Ed].

Q: ISN'T IT ALSO IMPORTANT TO HAMMER HOME THE MESSAGE THAT THIS BAG IS NOT MUCH GOOD TO EU TRANSFER PASSENGERS IF THERE IS NO AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE COUNTRY OF DEPARTURE AND THE EU?

That is a very important point. I think there is an understanding or assumption out there that if we all implement all of the same rules and we all produce all of these lovely bags then everything will be Hunky Dory. But it makes no difference to the transfer problem if the EU doesn't recognise the bag as being OK, because they have no agreement with the country where the passenger came from.

Q: HOW QUICKLY DO YOU THINK THERE COULD BE AN ACCORD BETWEEN THE EU AND THE US ON THIS?

I think that is another separate issue. What we have clarified is that it is fairly clear that the Commission don't see themselves as requiring a mandate to talk to the US because they can use the mandate for open skies and that has a security element in it and therefore it is under that banner that they will do it.

In that regard again I would be very positive that the ICAO letter of last Friday again puts the final piece on the table. So in one way there is no reason why there couldn't be an agreement very quickly and we are continuing to talk to the Commission about that regularly.

Q: COULD THAT BE DONE IN THE MARGINS OR IN THE PREAMBLES TO THE OPEN SKIES TALKS, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE ALMOST UPON US ANYWAY?

There is a summit on April 30. Now the run up to that may offer opportunities to put this on the table in some way. Whether they will actually sign off a piece of paper I don't know, but there are other opportunities coming up.

There are other EU-US meetings in May and there are certainly opportunities then to try and put it to bed. It shouldn't be a major deal because the pieces are all there. The security regulations that were put in place on November 6 in the EU were also put in place in the US. The bag specification is now agreed, so what is the problem other than getting down and doing it?

Q: I BET THAT WOULD WIPE OUT 20% OF THE TRANSFER PROBLEM OVERNIGHT?

I think it would and certainly it would help enormously. It would also eliminate a lot of hassle for people just travelling to the US trying to buy something, plus gate delivery and all of this carry on.

Q: IT WOULD ALSO BE A BIG EXAMPLE TO EVERYBODY ELSE THAT THIS CAN ACTUALLY CAN BE DONE WOULDN'T IT?

Yes, absolutely. In talking to our American colleagues in the last few days and over the weekend they also think that the ICAO paper going out now sets the scene for this agreement.

Our understanding now is that the American authorities fully accept the concept of the bag and are anxious to get moving on it and implementing it and that would suggest they are equally anxious to get an agreement with the EU.

(ENDS)