On October 27-28, 2026 EASA and EUROCONTROL jointly organised an Air Traffic Controller Competency‑based Training and Assessment (CBTA) Workshop for National Competent Authorities (NCAs) to support them in understanding the amendment to the European Air Traffic Control Officer (ATCO) Licensing Regulation (EU) 2015/340, which as from 1 January 2029 introduces CBTA requirements for initial training and operational air traffic services (ATS) units and ATCO training organisations (TOs).
At the workshop held at EUROCONTROL’s Aviation Learning Centre, NCA participants discussed the challenges and opportunities of managing the regulatory oversight of this change, benefiting from valuable perspective-sharing on the impacts of the regulatory changes from CANSO, the GATE Training Organisation, the EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC), the Belgian Supervisory Authority, and the Irish Aviation Authority.
The workshop concluded that:
- implementing CBTA represents the most significant change to ATCO training since the establishment of the common European rules, and is likely to provide systemic benefits at network level
- early exchanges between TOs and NCAs are necessary to ensure timely implementation of the regulatory amendments
- NCAs play a crucial role in managing their resources and approval schedules by ensuring early communication to TOs on the expected timelines for submissions and any additional documentation required (noting that training courses can be updated considering CBTA requirements, provided that courses and their related training plans continue to comply with the applicable requirements until end 2028).
- exploiting fully the inherent flexibility and adaptability of the CBTA approach when overseeing its implementation is key, EASA underlined, to unlocking efficiency gains in the ATCO training pipeline
- a more structured dialogue needs to take place across NCAs towards reaching a harmonised landscape of CBTA implementation at EU level.
To support the realisation of these conclusions, EASA and EUROCONTROL declared their readiness to:
- accompany NCA or other stakeholder initiatives to promote further understanding of the approval and oversight of the new CBTA methodology for ATCOs
- support any form of structured dialogue across NCAs that would contribute to harmonising the CBTA implementation landscape at EU level
- foster dedicated discussions over the next two years in their respective stakeholder forums, advisory bodies and working arrangements, with the aim of clarifying outstanding issues and moving towards a common understanding, uniform implementation and effective oversight of the requirements
- develop a generic introductory online course for inspectors and other stakeholders that covers the basic CBTA principles and philosophy
- move forward with the EASA Data4Training initiative, designed to leverage European-wide training data to support future improvements to ATC training course design and delivery
- consider providing further tools for sharing common understanding and best practices and developing a specific inspector training course for CBTA implementation.
As a next step, both organisations agreed to work towards integrating these conclusions into parallel, European network-level activities that will address the ATCO workforce challenge and ensure the provision of safe, efficient and resilient air traffic services across the European ATM network in the face of growing traffic demand.