Air transport supports around 14 million jobs in Europe and accounts for nearly 4.6% of GDP. It plays a key role in international trade, representing 35% of global trade value for just 1% of volumes.
Beyond its technical dimension, ATM plays a central societal role. It enables the movement of people, access to services and markets, and directly contributes to European cohesion. Its performance therefore goes beyond air traffic management alone, supporting the overall functioning of societies.
Today, this system is facing increasing pressures: operational and industrial fragmentation, technological dependencies on few critical components, capacity and resource tensions and growing cyber‑security threats. This, without considering the contribution of the sector to environmental impacts reduction.
Moreover, sovereignty in ATM cannot be understood as a logic of isolation, but rather as the ability to make controlled choices within a system of interdependencies.
Against this backdrop, how can Europe modernise its ATM while strengthening its sovereignty?
European airspace: a strategic asset governed by ATM
European airspace is far more than a transit space: it is a strategic asset at the intersection of economic, security and digital challenges, governed by Air Traffic Management (ATM). As a critical infrastructure, it ensures the continuity of essential activities. Any degradation in its performance has an immediate impact on economic flows It also contributes to operational safety and crisis management within an increasingly complex airspace.
ATM in Europe also has a structurally distinctive feature: its federated nature.
It is built on a unique organisational framework, centered on actors such as EUROCONTROL SESAR Joint Undertaking and EASA which enable the coordination
of policies, regulatory framework, standards and modernisation roadmaps at the ECAC scale.
This model gives Europe a recognised lead in terms of safety, interoperability and air traffic coordination. It represents a strategic advantage that must not only be preserved but strengthened, in a context of intensified international competition
and rapid technological transformation.
ATM also plays an indirect yet structurally important role in defence. As airspace is shared, coordination between civil and military uses relies on tightly interconnected systems.
Finally, the civil aeronautics sector directly contributes to Europe’s strategic autonomy. Recent conflicts have highlighted the importance of air technologies, particularly drones, whose military applications are rapidly spilling over into
civil uses. This growing permeability between defence and civil aviation further reinforces the strategic and dual‑use nature of these systems.
European airspace therefore sits at the crossroads of increasingly intertwined economic, security and digital challenges.
It is at this interface – from civil‑military coordination to mobility and digital resilience – that concrete solutions and shared strategies are now being developed.
Fragmentation and dependencies: the limits of the model
European ATM remains marked by a high degree of fragmentation. Systems developed at national level are often heterogeneous, monolithic and difficult to interoperate.
This situation limits economies of scale, slows innovation and keeps costs high, largely driven by legacy systems that are expensive to maintain and evolve (architectures, international coordination, competing industrial ecosystems, etc.).
Added to this are technological dependencies. Certain critical components rely on non‑European suppliers, raising issues of control, security and resilience in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment.
Growing digital vulnerabilities
The digital transformation of ATM needs to cope with increasing exposure to risk.
Greater system interconnection and more open architectures are expanding the attack surface, while the data processed – traffic, surveillance and flight intentions – are becoming critical assets with a dual dimension: security‑related,
due to their role in operations, and economic, given their increasing openness and value creation.
Cybersecurity can no longer be considered in isolation. It is now a structuring dimension of ATM’s digital transformation, which itself amplifies vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity must therefore be embedded from the design stage and cover
the entire value chain, from data and algorithms to cloud infrastructures, with implications that are simultaneously security‑related, economic and sovereign.
At the same time, architectural choices are becoming strategic. The growing use of cloud technologies requires secure, reversible environments aligned with European standards, in order to reconcile openness with control.
The New Service Delivery Model (NSDM) fits within this continuum. It does not create a model ex nihilo but rather extends and structures Europe’s existing capability to coordinate a large‑scale distributed system.
NSDM: transforming and rebalancing
Promoted by SESAR, the NSDM represents a major shift: moving from a system‑ownership logic to a service‑mastery approach.
Based on modular architectures, it enables ATM functions to be decoupled, supports incremental evolution and opens the way to regulated competition. In doing so, it helps reduce dependencies on monolithic systems.
However, this modularity also increases overall complexity especially while ANSPs needs to keep continue providing the operational service while modernising and securing their decommissioning roadmaps. The ability to integrate certified, safety‑critical
systems becomes central to ensuring both safety and performance. This transformation requires sustained investment, building on long‑standing European R&D efforts that have historically positioned the European aeronautics industry
among global leaders.
Moreover, standardisation is a cornerstone of the NSDM. Common interfaces and interoperability by design are essential to make modularity effective.
Standardisation is a cornerstone of the NSDM. Common interfaces and interoperability by design are essential to make modularity effective.
Beyond technical considerations, standardisation helps reduce dependencies, improve the reversibility of technological choices and strengthen the decision‑making capacity of European stakeholders.
The NSDM can therefore become an instrument of collective autonomy. However, this ambition requires alignment between public authorities and industry, convergence effort in order to avoid an additional misalignment between major technical
transformations and unnecessary expenditure.
At the same time, architectural choices are becoming structurally decisive. The use of cloud technologies requires secure, reversible environments aligned with European standards, in order to reconcile openness with control.
From this perspective, The NSDM promise to accelerate modernisation and reduce the gap between innovation and deployment relies on 2 key levers: Data and Hosting infrastructure:
- The creation of a European ATM data space and;
- The definition of a dedicated ATM Cloud Certification: NSDM calls for a broader reflection on infrastructure itself. An ATM model based on distributed services can only be sustained if it relies on sovereign cloud capabilities at European
scale
This raises questions around financing and the pooling of investments, particularly for the construction of a cloud infrastructure dedicated to ATM services, as well as a common data space to structure and orchestrate these services.
Ultimately, the coherence of the NSDM will depend as much on its architectural principles as on Europe’s ability to bring these shared technical foundations into being.
Market opening: a regulated industrial lever
Market opening does not equate to deregulation. It does not call into question the role of ANSPs nor the sovereign nature of air traffic control.
It applies to clearly defined, certified and regulated ATM services, enabling new players to contribute to specific functional components.
The objective is to stimulate innovation and foster a more dynamic industrial ecosystem. This dynamic unfolds in a context of intensified international competition, notably from the United States – benefiting from large‑scale public funding
through major contracts – and from China, which is now able to compete on certain structuring segments of civil aeronautics.
However, in a market of limited size, such openness must be accompanied in order to, on the one hand, avoid increased fragmentation and ensure scalability, and on the other, to prevent the entry of non‑European competitors.
A balance to be managed
The main risk lies in recreating new dependencies, particularly on non‑European actors.
The growing interconnection of systems, notably between ATM and UTM, reinforces this challenge. Managing the airspace continuum – including low‑altitude operations and emerging uses – requires coherent governance, common standards
and strong control over architectures.
Market opening must therefore remain a lever in support of a controlled system, rather than an end in itself.
Towards cooperative sovereignty
In ATM, sovereignty is neither about isolation nor self‑sufficiency. It is grounded in a cooperative and pragmatic approach, based on the ability to choose dependencies, control architectures and govern an open ecosystem.
In a system that is intrinsically transnational, sovereignty can only be collective. The NSDM and market opening can contribute to this by structuring a common framework and fostering cooperation between stakeholders.
If implemented coherently, they can strengthen resilience, support European industry and accelerate ATM modernisation. This ambition, however, requires a significant investment effort, both public and private. Needs related to decarbonisation,
ATM modernisation and the development of new technologies are estimated at several billion euros per year at European level. These benefits, however, depend on strategic alignment and appropriate governance.
The Operational Challenge Ahead
Sovereignty cannot be decreed; it is built through infrastructures, architectures, standards and the ability to master the integration of complex systems. Europe’s technological and operational sovereignty will also depend on its capacity to sustain investment levels consistent with its ambitions.
In a system that is inherently interconnected and transnational, sovereignty cannot be understood as isolation. It must be cooperative and pragmatic, founded on the ability to choose, govern and control critical dependencies rather than eliminate
them altogether.
The New Service Delivery Model (NSDM) and market opening provide a framework for a more modular, interoperable and resilient ATM ecosystem. Yet they also redefine the balance between stakeholders, introducing new responsibilities, new dependencies
and new governance challenges. Preserving Europe’s leadership in ATM will require sustained investment in infrastructures, standards, certification capabilities, system integration and change management, ensuring that a strategic advantage
built over several decades is not progressively eroded.
This challenge is particularly acute as 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for the European ATM ecosystem. Key decisions are expected regarding market structuring, service models, regulatory frameworks, governance arrangements and financing
mechanisms. The choices made in the coming months will influence not only the pace of ATM modernisation, but also Europe’s capacity to retain strategic control over one of its most critical infrastructures.
This raises a final question: how can these new models be integrated into critical, certified and 24/7 operational environments without compromising safety, resilience and continuity of service?
This operational challenge will be the focus of our next article. We will examine how ATM stakeholders can integrate modular, multi-supplier architectures while preserving the fundamental requirements that define air traffic management: safety,
certification, operational performance and service continuity.
Beyond this immediate challenge, 2026 is shaping up to be a decisive year for the European ATM ecosystem. Major choices are emerging regarding market structures, service models, regulatory frameworks, governance arrangements and financing mechanisms.
The decisions taken over the coming months will shape not only the pace of ATM modernisation, but also Europe's ability to preserve its technological, industrial and operational leadership.
As these debates unfold, we will continue to explore several key dimensions of the transformation: the challenge of modernising ATM while maintaining safe and efficient operations for end users; the practical pathways for turning the NSDM into
an operational reality in a sovereign, unstable and rapidly evolving Europe; and the evolution of the human-machine interaction model that will underpin the next generation of air traffic management.
The discussion is only beginning.