Emir wrote:
I managed to find time-related registration bugs which ended up in blocking my account. I hate poor programming skills…
It’s a programmer’s curse – I too see these bugs everywhere and it frustrates the heck out of me!
Thank you all for participating so far! It’s great to see how signed the petition, as I can’t see it as petitioner on the EU website.
A big special thanks to @ArcticChiller, @Snoopy, @Capitaine, and @tvoss for their support, I couldn’t have done this without them. We had to wait a few months, until the European Committee had approved and published our petition. We have requests pending to get our petition supported by known organizations, such as AOPA, main national aeroclubs etc.
We already have received support from the Swiss Aeroclub, AeroVFR and Antique Airplane Association of Switzerland. Also other forums seem to have found our petition, see here, here and here.
Please feel free to share this petition with all your (flying) colleagues, local aerodrome, club etc. Any support is appreciated! Remember: Signing the petitions is allowed for all citizens worldwide!
Done. Worthy initiative.
E
Done. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Frans wrote:
Please feel free to share this petition with all your (flying) colleagues, local aerodrome, club etc. Any support is appreciated! Remember: Signing the petitions is allowed for all citizens worldwide!
Is there some deadline for signing?
Airborne_Again wrote:
Is there some deadline for signing?There is no clear deadline. According to the EU Petitions website, following applies:
a. after suggesting a remedy and/or providing you with relevant information that addresses your concerns;
b. after a discussion in the Committee meeting;
c. when the Committee decides that no further action can be taken on your petition, the petition is included for closure in a special list (the B list) of the Committee’s agenda. This list is deemed to be approved at the end of the Committee meeting;
d. if you fail to respond or react on questions addressed to you by the Committee within a given deadline.
In all cases, you will be informed of the decision of the Committee in writing and of the reasons for the decision, and provided with relevant information and documentation where appropriate once the decision becomes available (Source)
Done
On the German domestic site there is some criticism of this topic, with the assertion that since the EU external borders are not properly controlled, Schengen enables easy smuggling and accordingly spot checks are picking up large numbers of contraband on German borders. Well, this is obvious; you cannot have a sealed border of that size, without serious military measures (communist-era Soviet bloc sort of thing) so Schengen is a largely symbolic idea, necessarily accompanied by an increase in smuggling and the EU must have known that. The promoter of this has been told to shut up and stop diverting the topic, but it may explain why there aren’t thousands of people over there signing this.
It’s a bit like the legal action against airports overcharging etc, which we ran a few years ago. EuroGA was criticised by a certain UK GA organisation (internally, not openly) due to their fear that this action may instead cause airports to exclude GA altogether. Stockholm Syndrome, for sure, but so is this.
First of all, this petition has nothing to do with Schengen nor with immigration checks. Secondly, this petition does not forbid customs to perform random checks at small airfields. This petition wants to enforce an existent EU regulation 2020/877 to all EU member states, so free movement between EU and non-EU states is guaranteed, and nobody is (illegally) forced by national customs to use ‘official border crossing points’ for an official customs declaration. The sole act of crossing the border alone, is now the “nothing to declare” note itself, like passing the green channel on an official border crossing point. For general aviation, this means free travel to any aerodrome you want, without further prior notice to customs. Just file an ICAO FPL and you’re done. Customs may however still perform random checks.
Last but not least, Germany is the only country that acknowledged and implemented the changed EU regulation 2015/2446, amended by EU regulation 2020/877. Plus Sweden, but they had already a similar procedure published in their AIP, before EU 2020/877 came into place. In other words: Criticism on the German side comes too late in the day. Even more: Criticism in general comes too late to the party, as EU regulations are actual law, valid in each EU member state above national law.
Yes; I agree.
Also, as I have written many times, this measure is great for UK, Ireland, etc because with Germany and Italy having a general “immigration everywhere, on some PN” concession, this greatly expands the range of accessible airports.
I wonder if that concession will now be withdrawn 
Let’s face it – in Schengen-land, it’s wasted.
