From December 6 to 8, CAAC Deputy Administrator Li Jian visited the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and European Commission with a delegation under his leadership. He met with the Executive Director of EASA Patrick Ky and Director General for European Commission’s DG MOVE Henrik Hololei respectively. During the meeting with Patrick Ky, they had thorough exchanges and discussions upon such issues as safety, airworthiness certification, new aviation technologies and international cooperation. They recognized highly the current China-EU bilateral relationship in civil aviation, and exchanged opinions upon further enhancing civil aviation exchanges, especially deepening bilateral airworthiness cooperation, conducing airworthiness certification for various aviation products, promoting imports and exports of aircraft, engines and UAVs and advancing industrial development.

During his visit to EU Headquarters in Brussels, Li Jian and Henrik Hololei signed the EU-China HA Agreed Record and witnessed the signing of the Agreement between the European Union and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Certain Aspects of Air Services (horizontal agreement) and the Agreement on Civil Aviation Safety between the European Union and the Government of the People’s Republic of China and its annex - China-EU Bilateral Airworthiness Agreement, which marked that the two sides had reached consensus on the texts and would initiate their respective internal legal proceedings.

Based on the horizontal agreement, the traditional specified provisions in bilateral civil air transport agreements signed between China and 27 EU member states will be replaced by EU carrier provisions, which will lay a foundation for further cooperation in air transport between China and EU.

China-EU Bilateral Airworthiness Agreement specifies that China and EU will fully recognize or accept civil aviation products of the other party, but there can be some differences in evaluations for recognition because the two sides may differ in their technical assessment process. Detailed procedures for implementation will be jointly discussed and developed by CAAC and EASA. The bilateral airworthiness agreement paves the way for China’s domestic civil aviation products to acquire European airworthiness recognition and enter the European market.