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Dominique MEREUZE KRAKOW 14 – 15 April 2012
On your behalf today, I’d like to thank Darek and all his team for their welcome in this most beautiful town of Krakow and in this magnificent Poland, with her rich landscapes, culture, history, sufferings and revivals. Thank you for the work they have done; I daresay his invitation goes far beyond the technical aspects of this EMF meeting. I can feel the symbolical value of our presence, and, for many reasons, I and all the EMF members here in Krakow delight in helping the Polish Federation to create or improve Microlight regulations in accordance with their aspirations to Fly Free!
Some of us would tend to forget this political dimension. In my view, it is as important as the purely technical issues that we tackle all the year round, in many national or European associations, in front of national and European bodies. I am sure that those of you here, and whom I meet regularly during these meetings, know what I’m talking about and will agree with me. • One of the EMF missions is indeed to promote Microlighting all over Europe, to help establish the least restricting regulations and to support the countries with little experience in that matter or which are submitted to very restricting regulations. • This is essentially the reason for our presence here and I thank those of you who understand it.
Besides, you have seen in the Agenda that the issues to expose or deal with are numerous and important. They have direct consequences on Microlighting, or indirectly through Light Aviation regulations, particularly LSA. So I won’t go into them right now, we’ll do it later on today and tomorrow. • But I simply will emphasize the need to be constantly on alert concerning Annex II of 216/2008 in all the meetings we attend. We repeatedly find people who would love to have us submitted to EASA rule. Likewise we constantly exchange information which proves very useful in our negotiations with each of our Civil Aviation administrations. The aim is to bring more harmony among our respective regulations and promote more bilateral exchanges. These should set examples that will progressively spread. For example the bilateral agreement between France and Great-Britain should be extended. Likewise in Italy the experience of Microlight helicopter has partly lead to the creation of a new class in France. Of course the FAI competition affairs are a major concern to us.
Concerning the other major issues (Part M, LSA, etc.), they don’t directly interest Microlighta priori, but they might if they gave bad ideas to our respective CAA. So we have to be watchful on these issues. Others concern us more directly (8.33, Airspace) and we have to be present, too. These are only examples among others, as we shall see along these two days. • You will admit that all this couldn’t be dealt with only through E-mails, although you may have noticed they came to you massively! Those who regularly take part in our major talks will vouch for the absolute necessity of formal meetings to exchange directly and take decisions. • Thank you all again for your constant presence. • Now, we can get to work!!!