Ordeal at Community airports
23.3.2009
WRITTEN QUESTION E-2246/09
by Salvador Garriga Polledo (PPE‑DE)
to the Commission
The Commission is probably aware of the ordeal to which all Community citizens are subject when they attempt to travel by air. They always, at any airport, find tireless staff who subject them to all kinds of checks to prevent them from carrying out terrorist acts, which is by no means a trivial objective.
But the control system, and the abuse inherent in it, has not seen the slightest improvement in all the years of its implementation. Community citizens cannot avoid blaming the Commission, which has been unable to find a system, a formula or a method that will guarantee security at airports without subjecting citizens to the current rigid control systems. This has by no means increased public sympathy towards the Commission, with the political cost that this entails for that institution.
Does the Commission believe that greater attention should be paid to investigating ways of guaranteeing security at airports without subjecting citizens to the practices consistently imposed on them by staff carrying out checks? Does it believe that it should be aware that its duty to citizens entails using imagination and expertise in order to gain the affection of the European public, guaranteeing aviation security by means of practices that are more innovative and less crude?
OJ C 189, 13/07/2010