This week ECA will meet with all the other members of the Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee. Representatives of the airlines, the airports, the air navigation service providers together with representatives of the professional and other staff groups, form this expert group on civil aviation. The potential of this forum is huge - not just as expert advisors on pending legislation - but also as architects and authors of important legislative initiatives, such as the Working Time Directive for Mobile Staff in Civil Aviation.

The potential value of, for instance, a negotiated common industry approach on the use of in flight data collected by ever more sophisticated monitoring systems is obvious; and a coordinated position on Denied Boarding Compensation might have avoided the cumbersome and sometimes unworkable system we now have.

All legislation benefits enormously from expert opinion - and that is comprehensively represented both round the Social Dialogue table and when the same players - acting as "stakeholders" - contribute to the EU?s legislative and regulatory processes.

However, staff representatives are the only group which has particular difficulties in obtaining the time needed to consider and advocate their position or advice. Those who serve the membership and the EU legislative system on the ECA Executive Board and as experts in EASA and EuroControl working groups do so either because their Pilot Association has managed to negotiate that time industrially, or because they pay for it.

Sometimes, as recently happened with one Executive Board Director, an agreement with a reputable airline was suddenly and unilaterally withdrawn by the airline! This meant that this Director's ability to work with the EU Institutions on behalf of all European professional pilots was put directly into question and conflict with time for his family - an unsustainable and wholly unreasonable position.

Those who represent commercial interests, such as the airlines or airports can choose whether they attend a particular forum or not. But some of these same commercial interests have the ability to deny the ability for employee representatives to do the same. This not only puts at risk continued pilot input into the EU's legislative process, but also risks degrading the value of social dialogue at EU level.

Until there is guaranteed Europe wide access to appropriate time off work to represent one?s fellow professionals, just like there is for members of European Works Councils, then European Citizens and their Institutions cannot be sure that they derive full benefit from social partners' and stakeholders expert input.