Airport security - who will foot the bill?

If Europe's airports ever open again the introduction of new security measures like body scanners will be expensive. So who will pay, passengers or government? MEPs on the Transport Committee want EU governments to foot the bill and the matter will be discussed by the whole Parliament on Monday.

The Transport Committee's position is that aviation security measures that go beyond common EU requirements should be paid for by Member States, not passengers.

Under the proposal governments would remain free to decide how to share the costs of the measures already covered by existing EU rules for things like metal and explosives detectors, sniffer dogs, hand searches and liquid screeners.

However, they would be required to foot the bill if they chose to introduce body scanners, for instance, which are not yet listed as a common EU aviation security method.

Austrian Socialist Jörg Leichtfried drafted the Transport Committee report.  He told us, “we are more or less in line with the governments except about who has to pay. We will see how our suggestion goes - if within the EU regulation then the airports are free to decide, if above the EU regulation, then the countries have to pay.”

Costs go down?

Members also strongly support better pricing transparency. They insist that passengers should know exactly what percentage of the fare will pay for airport security.

“At the moment there is a system which allows some airports to charge more - there is no transparency on how the charges are calculated for the airports and passengers. Security charges will become more visible for citizens and as a result they will go down,” Mr Leichtfried said.

Also on the plenary agenda are MEPs' questions to the European Commission on how many countries have adopted the airline “blacklist” legislation that bars certain carriers from Europe's airspace.