The 38th Session of International Civil Aviation Organization Assembly took place from September 24, 2013 to October 4, 2013 in Montreal Canada.
The Assembly was attended by delegations from 191 ICAO Member States and 54 observer delegations. The meeting was also attended by the Polish delegation - Mr. Piotr Ołowski - President of the Civil Aviation Authority, and Małgorzata Polkowska, Ph.D. During the 38th Assembly many important decisions and arrangements have been made. Elections to the ICAO Council also took place during the Assembly. Poland achieved in these elections a historic victory and for the first time will be seated among the 36 Member States Representatives in the governing body of the Organization - the ICAO Council. The Polish permanent Representative of the Council is Ms. Małgorzata Polkowska, Ph.D.
Among the most important decisions of the Assembly was the decision of the Member States to develop a global market-based measure ( MBM ) for international civil aviation. President of the ICAO Council - Mr. Roberto Kobeh González stressed that "agreement on the MBM is a historic milestone for air transport and for the role of multilateralism in addressing global climate challenges. Once again, our States have shown that significant boundaries can be surpassed when we agree to recognize and accommodate our varying circumstances while progressing together towards common goals. Through perseverance and compromise by our Member States and the guidance of our Assembly President and Executive Committee Chair, France’s Michel Wachenheim, we have ultimately determined our greener way forward.”
ICAO’s Member States agreed to report back in 2016 with a proposal for a global MBM scheme capable of being implemented by 2020. Major efforts will need to be undertaken in order to address the challenges and accommodate specific concerns of developing countries going forward.
The 38th ICAO Assembly also strongly endorsed two revised and significant ICAO Global Plans. Now served by complementary collaborative methodologies and clear operational performance objectives in the areas of Safety and Air Navigation, the new ICAO strategy documents will be instrumental to how States and industry unite over the coming decades to safely expand air traffic capacity and efficiently accommodate the projected doubling of air traffic by 2030.
During the Assembly the participants have considered the matters of security, capacity and efficiency of air navigation, air transport economic development, environmental protection and legal developments.
In the Safety domain, the 38th ICAO Assembly reiterated that global aviation’s first and guiding commitment is to reduce the rate and number of accidents worldwide. It also confirmed that this work will now be guided by incremental targets established in a revised ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP) which received strong Assembly endorsement.
Continuing Safety progress will now be enhanced by complementary Air Navigation analysis and reporting cycles, as confirmed by the Assembly’s similarly strong endorsement of the revised ICAO Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP).
The GANP will permit ICAO to practically and flexibly realize the long-sought after goal of a globally-harmonized Air Navigation system. With its extensively-detailed aviation system block upgrade modules, the revised GANP provides unprecedented levels of transparency and planning certainty to States, regional implementation groups, service providers, airspace users and industry stakeholders.
By endorsing the Council’s Decisions on Security and Facilitation, the Assembly confirmed ICAO’s emphasis on achieving a greater balance between effective control measures and system-wide connectivity and efficiency. Risk-management-based prioritization, mutual recognition of equivalent security measures and other key principles will now serve as foundational components to future Security and Facilitation discussions in ICAO.
The Assembly endorsed the new ICAO Strategic Objective aimed at the Economic Development of Air Transport. Also endorsed were the recommendations delivered by the Sixth Worldwide Air Transport Conference (ATConf/6) and the Organization’s future work plan in the areas of forecasting, economic analysis and statistics.
In the area of Environmental Protection, the Assembly recognized ICAO’s tremendous progress during the last triennium, and reaffirmed its collective aspirational goals and agreed on a comprehensive strategy to progress all elements of the basket of measures, namely technology, operations and alternative fuels and set forth a very ambitious work programme for capacity building and assistance to States in the development and implementation of their action plans to reduce emissions.
The submission of State Action Plans, representing more than 80 per cent of international traffic during the last triennium, was recognized as a significant achievement by the Assembly. ICAO also received separate and strong signs of support for this work through announcements of related financial assistance by the Global Environment Facility and the European Union (EU).
In the legal field, the Assembly adopted a resolution to promote the ratification of the Beijing Convention and the Beijing Protocol of 2010. These two new treaties have broadened and strengthened the global aviation security regime to meet new and emerging threats.