The EU aviation sector serves passengers and EU businesses and has a hugely positive impact on our economy and on the life and mobility of EU citizens and businesses.

The "Aviation Package" is foreseen to identify the challenges facing the EU's aviation sector and measures that can bolster its competitiveness. The Aviation Package is expected to be adopted by the Commission by the end of 2015.

European Regions Airline Association (ERA) is a non-profit trade association representing the intra-European aviation industry. Its strength and influence spans more than three decades, since its inception ERA has developed and grown in size and reputation to represent 53 airlines and over 120 service providers including airframe and engine manufacturers, airports, suppliers and service providers from all over Europe.

The Association of European Airlines (AEA) brings together over 30 major airlines representing the voice of the European full service airline sector.

1. Safe Legislation

Some €352 billion of EU public procurement is open to bidders from 15 member countries of the WTO agreement on government procurement (Armenia (Pending), Canada, Hong Kong (China), Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Liechtenstein, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Chinese Taipei and the U.S.). The value of U.S. procurement offered to foreign bidders is currently just €178 billion and €27 billion for Japan, whereas only a fraction of the Chinese public procurement market is open to foreign business.

Hiring an EU Funding Consultant requires careful planning. Clients must consider how they will work with the Consultant and other project collaborators to make the most of the time invested in their application for funding. It helps to understand that Funding Consultants cannot do all the work themselves. Clients need to set aside time to discuss their goals, answer technical questions about their work, evaluate suggestions from the Consultant and produce and execute a strategy based on those discussions.

General Tips

There are general aspects of proposal development that you need to consider when writing an EC Proposal for Funding

The EU provides funding for a broad range of projects and programmes covering areas such as regional and urban development, employment and social inclusion, agriculture and rural development, maritime and fisheries policies, research and innovation, humanitarian aid.

Winning EU Funding is an extremely competitive process. While an outstanding project is an absolute must, the skills to sell an idea to the funders and knowledge of the EU policy context are equally important, as well as managing and delivering a project when it has been financed.

Evaluators are experts in charge of evaluating proposals, including ethics review experts. The evaluator provides individual scores and comments for each evaluation criterion that are described in the call documents and work programmes. The evaluators may also be invited to consensus meetings where the awarded scores are discussed and a consensus report is prepared.