Founded in 1960, today EUROCONTROL, the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, is a civil-military organization committed to building, together with its partners, a Single European Sky that will deliver the air traffic management (ATM) performance required for the twenty-first century and beyond.

EUROCONTROL is uniquely qualified to help make the Single European Sky a reality:

• its 39 Member States provide a truly pan- European perspective;
• its technical expertise is unrivalled and covers both the operational and regulatory elements;
• can advise on both the civil and the military aspects of ATM;
• has real experience at bringing States with different needs together for a common goal;
• has recently restructured the Agency to make sure its activities are tailored towards working with the EU on the Single European Sky.

EUROCONTROL provides a range of services to the aviation community including:

• development and coordination of the implementation of European air traffic management (ATM) programmes
• air traffic flow and capacity management 
• collection of air navigation charges 
• regional control of airspace 
• development of new ATM technologies and procedures
• air traffic management training.

What is the Single European Sky?

The European air traffic management (ATM) system currently handles around 26,000 flights daily. Forecasts indicate air traffic levels are likely to double by 2020. Moreover, European ATM costs an additional €2-3 billion every year, compared to other similar systems in the world. How will the European airspace accommodate the increasing air traffic flows, whilst cutting costs and improving its performance?
The answer came with the initiative of organizing airspace into functional blocks, according to traffic flows rather than to national borders. Such a project was not possible without common rules and procedures at European level. The Single European Sky (SES) was born to meet this need.
A key element of the Single European Sky regulations is to reduce the number of the portions of airspace already in place in Europe (67) and to replace them by 9 functional airspace blocks (FABs) by 2012.