Doug Newhouse reports on this morning?s session of the European Travel Retail Council?s business forum in Amsterdam which concentrated purely on upon security issues and resolving the transit confiscation problem.

Entitled: ?The European Travel Retail Business ? business as usual? this morning?s ETRC business forum began with an opening welcome and introductions from ETRC Vice President and Kapp? International Chairman Jacques Parson.
Following on from Parson, ETRC President Frank O?Connell provided an update on the security and global campaign. O?Connell began by saying that while security is uppermost in people's minds the reality is that there is more to the business than just security.

Since 1999 he said that Europe has experienced an enormous growth in travel driven by low cost carriers, so the percentage growth in travel is quite enormous. He pointed to 13% growth at Irish airports and more than 15% at Dublin Airport.

He said most of these shoppers are duty paid shoppers who are an enormous potential market and it will be a challenge to convert those millions of passengers into customers.

Updating the audience on the security issue he said it is a worsening problem following ICAO's recommendations to its 189 member airport countries. ICAO has said it cannot implement a solution and bi-lateral agreements are the only way.

He said many countries are also adding to the rules and this is potentially a problem because passengers need consistency. O'Connell showed a slide indicating approximate confiscation numbers. This showed Frankfurt Airport confiscating 2,500 litres of liquids a day, Schiphol 1,000, Madrid 900 and Zurich Airport taking E.22,000 worth of alcohol and perfume a day. He said these numbers and those at other airports will only get worse as the busy summer holiday months approach.

O'Connell said this obviously represents an awful loss to an awful lot of people and the danger is that these passengers may not buy again. O'Connell referred to it as a slow burning fuse.

Moving on he said that 33 countries have now implemented these ICAO regulations and five more will do so in a week's time.

He said that the ETRC still gets regular calls from people who think that putting liquid purchases into a tamper proof bag somehow makes that confiscation proof. It doesn't and he emphasised that the bag is only part of the solution that will come into play when mutual security recognition is achieved between the EU and a particular non EU country.

He said Australia will implement its set of rules this Saturday which will require all passengers to be screened at the last port of call before they enter the country and any passengers with liquids in excess of 100ml will lose them.

He called this a serious issue. He said it will effectively stop everybody from selling to Australian-bound passengers. He said that Australia is negotiating bi-lateral agreements with countries in south-east Asia, but what form these will take remains to be seen.

He said the President of the Commission Barroso is supporting the mission to find a solution amidst mounting political pressure from the European Parliament.

He said there is pressure because EU citizens are affected by this. More positively he said that the TSA in the US now looks like it is moving towards the sealed bag and trying to address the confiscation problem. O'Connell said the TSA now acknowledges that this is a big problem for US airports.

He said several countries have now approached the EU to try and reach some form of agreement but that needs to become a reality before the summer.

Any protocol has to be as simple as possible, said O'Connell and in the first instance mutual recognition should probably concentrate on airports with major hubs. To try and solve it everywhere will be impossible. He said the focus should be to concentrate on those airports where the problems are at their worst.
This will require mutual recognition through some form of validation. Retail supply chains also need a simple procedure. This currently being drafted by the commission.

New specifications are with ICAO for the sealed bag, but there are still some elements that need to be addressed. These elements have more or less been agreed with the TSA. He said it is important that there is a common standard.

Currently ICAO has a number of options built in but ETRC is opposed to this since it believes option can lead to confusion and they don't want to have different bags coming from different countries.

He says the supply chain is inherently secure and ETRC believes it needs broad principle requirements to allow a quick solution to the supply chain part of this. ICAO is drafting this and he believes that the latest version is a big improvement on the last one.

In conclusion he said that the ETRC, ACI Europe and other groups need to work closely with the European Commission, ICAO and third countries to get mutual recognition. But he also emphasised that there is a desperate need for agreement between the EU and the US and Canada.

He said all of the pieces are now there for an agreement. Such an agreement would remove much passenger annoyance and restore the business to US passengers. He said that Dublin Airport alone is down 12% in its sales to Americans because of this.

O'Connell said that the summer peak is coming and mutual recognition needs to be in place by then. Once the protocol is in place in one or two locations, he said that he believes that other blocks of countries will follow suit.