At our June ECA Conference, I anticipate we will welcome into full ECA membership the Hungarian Airline Pilots' Association (HunALPA). ECA membership will then include Cockpit Crew Associations from 23 of the 27 EU Countries, all the EU Candidate Countries and 3 of the 4 EFTA countries. This gives ECA one of the most representative membership profiles in the European Civil Aviation sector.

The ability for ECA to draw our opinion from over 36,000 professional pilots across the entire industry and from every corner of Europe, means that for the regulator and legislator we are much more useful - and harder to ignore! But this is not just about collecting the "full set", like a stamp collector - each member is valuable to the work of the organisation. Deren tells me it was the Greek philosopher Plato who first suggested that with a good team, the whole is better than the sum of its parts.

Not only do we have wide geographical scope, but we also represent all the segments of the industry - unlike other European Aviation Associations. Our membership works hard for network, low fares, charter, cargo, express, helicopter, regional, air taxi and specialist operators. We do not have commercial or shareholder interests clouding our judgement when it comes to evaluating questions of safety. For the vast majority of flight crew, being a pilot is a vocation and so we have deep, long term commitment to the success of the industry.

Given this unique viewpoint, we are also aware of the very dynamic and fast changing nature of our business. In a little over 100 years we have grown from a bicycle maker making wings with wood and fabric to a multi billion euro infrastructure industry, which is absolutely vital to the all the world's economies. In just the last 10 years, the industry in Europe has seen rapid growth and the development of truly pan-European airlines.

As pilots, we are also good at managing change. Europe wide Trans National Airlines (TNA) - created following the 1997 implementation of aviation liberalisation in the EU - challenged the previous model of wholly national airlines. Representing the views of a pilot workforce which is employed in many different countries and under many different sets of employment regulations was a new challenge. But ECA and its members have faced the change, developing the ECA TNA Convention - adopted by the whole membership. Already several ECA Member Associations work within an agreement which coordinates representation to ensure an effective and seamless service to the professional pilots who work for EasyJet. Similar efforts ensure that cockpit crews from the SAS, Lufthansa, TUI and Air France/KLM Groups are not "divided" by their geography.

In May, ECA is organising a Seminar on Transnational Collective Representation supported by financing from the European Commission. This aims to analyse the problem to a much greater depth, developing appropriate responses to the employment challenge. ECA will then work to have a coherent employment framework available for modern successful companies and their employees.

ECA also strongly welcomes and supports recruitment efforts within our members. This will ensure that we can continue to draw our work from as broad a base of European Professional Cockpit crew as is possible. Questions have been asked - and will continue to be asked - of those few MAs who might still have barriers to flight crew membership from all segments of our diverse industry. We will face the challenges and changes of the future calmly but vigorously, professionally - and all together!