The Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community2 (the ‘Withdrawal Agreement’) was concluded by the Union by means of Council Decision (EU) 2020/1353 and entered into force on 1 February 2020. The transition period provided for in Article 126 of the Withdrawal Agreement (the ‘transition period’), during which Union law continues to apply to and in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) in accordance with Article 127 of the Withdrawal agreement, ends on 31 December 2020.

The principal objective of Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 of the European Parliament and of the Council4 is to establish and maintain a high and uniform level of aviation safety in the Union. For that purpose, a system of certificates has been established for various aviation activities, in order to achieve the required safety level and to enable the necessary verifications and the mutual acceptance of certificates issued.

In the area of aviation safety, the consequences of the end of the transition period for certificates and approvals without an agreement setting out the new aviation safety relationship between the Union and the United Kingdom can be addressed by many stakeholders through various measures. Those measures include the transfer to a civil aviation authority of one of the Member States and the application, before the end of the transition period, for a certificate issued by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (the ‘Agency’), taking effect from the day following the end of the transition period.

However, for some certificates, specific measures need to be put in place to address the consequences of the end of the transition period. This is particularly the case for design certificates issued before the end of the transition period by the Agency to design organisations with their principal place of business in the United Kingdom, or by such design organisations approved by the Agency. Until that date, the Agency was carrying out the functions and tasks of the ‘State of design’ under the Convention on International Civil Aviation and the Annexes thereto on behalf of the United Kingdom as provided for in Article 77 (1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1139. After the end of the transition period, the functions and tasks of the ‘State of design’ regarding the United Kingdom will be assumed by the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority. In order to address that change, the United Kingdom has enacted legislation that deems design certificates issued before the transition period to have been issued under the laws of the United Kingdom with effect from the end of the transition period.

Specific measures on the Union’s part are necessary to ensure that, insofar as aircraft registered in the Union are concerned, the designs that were covered by such design certificates continue to be covered by design certificates governed by Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 after the end of the transitional period. The specific measures should allow the aircraft operators concerned to continue using the products in question. It is therefore necessary to provide that the Agency or, as the case may be, design organisations approved by it, are deemed to have issued the design certificates covering those designs with effect from the day following the end of the transition period. Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 and relevant Commission acts envisage such design certificates, issued on the basis that the aircraft in question is registered in a Member State, even though a third country is the State of design.

It is necessary to clarify that those design certificates are subject to the relevant rules set out in Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 and the relevant implementing and delegated acts adopted by virtue of it or of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council5, in particular those applicable to design certification and mandatory continuing airworthiness information.

In view of the urgency entailed by the end of the transition period, it is considered to be appropriate to provide for an exception to the eight-week period referred to in Article 4 of Protocol No 1 on the role of national Parliaments in the European Union, annexed to the Treaty on European Union, to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community.

Since the objective of this Regulation, namely, maintaining a high and uniform level of aviation safety in the Union, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States but can rather, by reason of its scale and effects, be better achieved at Union level, the Union may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union. In accordance with the principle of proportionality as set out in that Article, this Regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve that objective.

This Regulation should enter into force as a matter of urgency and should apply from the day following the end of the transition period, unless an agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom governing matters of civil aviation safety related to design certificates addressed in this Regulation has entered into force or provisionally applies by that date,