‘CLEAN ATM 2’ & ‘GREEN CNS’ awarded €141 million to accelerate modernisation of European sky

Paloma Aba Garrote, Director of CINEA (the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency), Mariagrazia La Piscopia, Executive Director of the SDM (Single European Sky ATM Research 'SESAR' Deployment Manager) and Raúl Medina, Director General of EUROCONTROL and representing the Organisation in its role as SDM Consortium Coordinator, today celebrated the signature of two Grant Agreements awarding €141 million in total to the CLEAN ATM 2 and GREEN CNS projects.

Prepared and coordinated by the SDM in response to the 2023 Connecting Europe Facility for Transport call for proposals, the ATM projects CLEAN ATM 2 and GREEN CNS represent another vital step forward to accelerate the modernisation and decarbonisation of the aviation industry.

These initiatives, bringing together around 50 operational stakeholders from across Europe (including air navigation service providers, airlines, airports and the EUROCONTROL Network Manager), represent a significant advancement to enhance the efficiency, digitisation and environmental sustainability of Air Traffic Management in Europe.

They help mobilising over €275 million of investment and will complement the existing set of 350 Implementation Projects already under SDM coordination. For the first time, the SDM-coordinated initiative also foresees the participation of the Ukrainian air navigation service provider - UkSATSE. This is a crucial step toward further integrating Ukraine into the European Air Traffic Management network, especially during these challenging times.

The award of CLEAN ATM2 and GREEN CNS initiatives marks another step forward in our mission to modernise and enhance the efficiency, digitalisation, and environmental sustainability of Air Traffic Management across Europe, contributing to the ambitious objectives of the European Green Deal.

The two projects are also demonstrating true European partnerships. All main stakeholders are working together as one in order to contribute to the EU's policy objectives and deliver tangible results.

CLEAN ATM2, with a CEF grant of €87 million, will accelerate the adoption of the Common Project One Regulation, while GREEN CNS, supported by €54 million, will drive the modernisation of Europe's Communication, Navigation, and Surveillance infrastructure.

I look forward to the progress and advancements of the CLEAN ATM2 and GREEN CNS. Their successful outcomes will demonstrate how our collective efforts are driving meaningful change for the future of the European transport sector and beyond our borders.

SESAR Deployment Manager is excited to celebrate the signature and launch of two ambitious multi-stakeholder projects like CLEAN ATM 2 and GREEN CNS. This is another important milestone in the long-standing SDM mandate to support and assist stakeholders and their commitment to SESAR deployment and ATM modernisation. It is also rewarding to see the participation of UkSATSE in one of the projects: this a testament to the hard work and cooperation we put in place to further anchor Ukraine in the EU transport system.

We are on a promising path for the future: we are not only building on the initial ambition of the CLEAN ATM initiative by adding an additional €175 million investment through CLEAN ATM 2, but also - for the first time under the SDM mandate - we are joining forces with airlines, airports and air navigation service providers across Europe to modernise our common CNS infrastructure. We look forward to continuing this journey with all our Implementing Partners, playing our part in building the European Air Traffic Management systems and infrastructure of the future.

EUROCONTROL is proud to be strongly supporting the modernisation and decarbonisation of air traffic management in Europe, in our role as Consortium Coordinator of the SESAR Deployment Manager.

The signature of these two Agreements will help accelerate a comprehensive and ambitious set of investments, driving the adoption of new ATM functionalities and technologies, as well as helping optimise Europe's CNS infrastructure.

It is also a recognition of the successful partnership between EUROCONTROL's Network Manager as the CNS Programme Manager and the SDM in our collective efforts to deliver a more modern, sustainable and efficient European ATM sector.

And it gives me great pleasure to welcome the participation of UkSATSE in the GREEN CNS initiative: integrating Ukraine more closely into the European aviation network is a key goal for EUROCONTROL, and their participation reflects a joint strong commitment to support Ukraine in these challenging times,

From left: Valeria Villanova (CINEA), Lucie Zackova (CINEA), Gaia Basile (SDM), Ramón Raposo Vidal (SDM), Mariagrazia La Piscopia (SDM), Paloma Aba-Garotte (CINEA), Raúl Medina (EUROCONTROL), Miguel Marti Vidal (EUROCONTROL-SDM), Isabelle Jagiello (CINEA), Renaud Trapp (EUROCONTROL-SDM) and Elina Tiihonen (CINEA).

About CLEAN ATM 2 & GREEN CNS

Mobilising over €275 million of investments in the next 5 years, the two projects will help in accelerating the adoption of both Common Project 1 and CNS-related technologies, including:

• Extended Airport Operations Plan and its integration with the Network Operations Plan- a rolling plan to be adopted into the 17 major European hubs, helping to reduce congestion, delays, unnecessary carbon and noise emissions and drastically improve the experience of over 500 million passengers per year
• System Wide Information Management, supporting the adoption of standards, protocols and services that will further digitalize, specifically in the area of exchanging Meteorological and Flight Information Exchange. This will open the door to further automation and to further efficiencies in the way flights are operated on a daily basis.
• Communication infrastructure evolution, helping to overcome the existing limitations of Air / Ground datalink communications, and paving the way for airlines to exchange data and information on their fleet in a much a more efficient way, also preventing the risk of bandwidth saturation;
• Surveillance infrastructure modernization and optimisation, fostering the adoption of both ground and airborne equipage to accelerate the use of ADS-B for surveillance purposes and supporting the decommissioning of legacy, more costly and less efficient radar infrastructure;
• Performance Based Navigation arrival and departure routes and procedures, optimizing the use of airspace into 15 airports that welcome over 60 million passengers per year, and supporting 6 major European airlines to upgrade their on-board avionics on hundreds of aircraft, thus enabling the use of more environmentally efficient procedures all across Europe.

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