Alemanno, Alberto --- "What Happened and Lessons Learned: A European and International Perspective" [2011] ELECD 909; in Alemanno, Alberto (ed), "Governing Disasters" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Governing Disasters

Editor(s): Alemanno, Alberto

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857935724

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: What Happened and Lessons Learned: A European and International Perspective

Author(s): Alemanno, Alberto

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

1. What happened and lessons learned:
a European and international
perspective
Alberto Alemanno

More than 20 years after the EU eliminated its internal land borders, the
Union still lacks an integrated airspace. This seems to the most immediate
regulatory lesson learnt from the recent volcanic ash crisis. In this introduc-
tory chapter, I provide a first-hand analysis of the regulatory answer
developed across Europe in the aftermath of the eruption of the Icelandic
volcano Eyjafjallajökull and qualify it as a case in point for an analysis of
the concept of `emergency risk regulation'. While reconstructing the
unfolding of the events and the procedures followed by the regulators, I will
attempt to address some of the following questions: What did the assess-
ment of the danger of volcanic ash mean for airplanes? Who was compe-
tent to take risk-management decisions, such as the controversial flight
bans? Is it true that the safe level of volcanic ash was zero? How to explain
the shift to a new safety threshold (of 2,000 mg/m3) only five days after the
event? Did regulators overact? To what extent did they manage the per-
ceived risk rather than the actual one?


1.1 THE EMERGENCY REGULATORY RESPONSE
Following the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull on 14 April
2010, a cloud of ash quickly spread across Europe, helped by favourable
winds. As a result, most European civil aviation authorities closed their
respective airspaces.1 The flying bans came amid fears that the ...