Europe’s ground handling rules have not changed in substance since 1996. For nearly thirty years, the framework governing who is allowed to service aircraft on airport ramps across the EU has remained in place, opening markets to competition while leaving questions of safety and labour standards largely to member states. That arrangement is now under formal scrutiny for the first time in a generation, and events at Amsterdam Schiphol illustrate in concrete terms what a revised model might look like.
How the 1996 Ground Handling Rules Opened the Ramp
The Ground Handling Directive of 1996 is one of three pieces of airport legislation that the European Commission has placed under review, alongside the Slot Regulation and the Airport Charges Directive. Its core logic was straightforward: before liberalisation, airports or their chosen partners held monopolies over ramp services. The Directive broke that open, requiring airports above certain traffic thresholds to allow multiple competing providers. Airlines gained negotiating leverage; handlers competed on price.
That model delivered real benefits in the years that followed. It also embedded tensions that have taken decades to surface fully. Competing on price in a labour-intensive industry puts pressure on wages and conditions. Margins thin, workforces turn over, and service quality can suffer. The Commission’s consultation, which is open until 28 October 2025 and available through the Have Your Say portal in all EU languages, acknowledges the landscape has shifted considerably since the Directive was written.
What the Commission Is Now Asking
The Commission’s public consultation frames the review around five trends that the 1996 rules were not designed to address: market consolidation among handling companies, growing airport capacity constraints, labour shortages, competitive pressure from non-EU carriers, and the demands of decarbonisation. These are not peripheral concerns. They go to the structural question of whether open-access competition alone can deliver the resilience and sustainability that European aviation now requires.
Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism Apostolos Tzitzikostas set out the underlying rationale in the Commission’s notice: “We must cultivate a resilient, competitive, and sustainable aviation sector that ensures affordable connectivity.” The consultation is the mechanism through which the Commission gathers evidence before deciding whether legislation needs to change and, if so, how.
Readers who want to explore which airlines operate at the airports most affected by these rules can use our Airline Search to look them up by route or destination.
Schiphol’s Three-Handler Model
While the Commission consults, Amsterdam Schiphol has already moved in a direction that the review might eventually encourage more broadly. According to Aviation Pros / Ground Support Worldwide, Schiphol launched a tender in December 2025 and provisionally selected three operators in June. Aviation Pros / Ground Support Worldwide confirms that Schiphol awarded new ground handling concessions at the airport to dnata, KLM and Viggo, a decision the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) also reports.
Aviation Pros / Ground Support Worldwide reports that this reduces the number of handlers at Schiphol from six to three. The rationale, as the ETF reports, includes a requirement built into the tender that operators comply with the sectoral collective agreement, protecting salary levels, working hours, contract type and length of service for staff transferring between employers. The Dutch government did not, however, extend the concession model to self-handling, meaning airlines that choose to service their own aircraft at Schiphol face no cap, according to the ETF.
Labour Standards as a Policy Lever
The ETF’s response to the Schiphol outcome is instructive. The federation welcomed the Dutch government’s decision and used the occasion to argue that a future revision of the EU Ground Handling Directive should allow airports to limit the number of competing handlers and should introduce social conditionalities as a standard requirement. The federation’s position connects Schiphol’s local solution to the wider legislative debate: if Brussels writes social floors into any revised Directive, the Schiphol approach becomes a template rather than an exception.
This matters because the inclusion of social conditionalities in a concession tender is not straightforward under existing EU competition and internal-market rules. The review the Commission has launched is precisely the forum in which these tensions will need to be resolved. Whether the outcome favours a tighter concession model, a strengthened collective-bargaining framework, or something else entirely depends on what the consultation produces and how the Commission interprets it.
What the Evidence Suggests
Two things are visible from the facts available. First, the pressure for change is coming from multiple directions at once: airlines and airports raising capacity and sustainability concerns, workers’ organisations raising labour standards, and regulators looking at whether the current rules remain fit for purpose. That breadth of concern strengthens the political case for a substantive revision rather than a minor update.
Second, Schiphol’s concession model shows that member states retain room to act within the existing Directive’s framework, at least for third-party handling. The Dutch government’s choice to combine a reduction in handler numbers with social conditionalities in the tender creates a live example that other airports and governments can point to, for better or worse, as the Commission weighs its options.
Commissioner Tzitzikostas’s broader statement about the sector is worth holding in mind throughout this process. The Commission notes that “aviation plays a pivotal role in increasing mobility, driving economic growth, creating jobs, and facilitating trade.” Ground handling sits at the base of that entire structure. It is the unglamorous infrastructure on which every departure depends, and the thirty-year-old rules governing it are, by the Commission’s own acknowledgement, overdue for scrutiny.
The Bottom Line
The EU’s formal review of its ground handling rules is the most significant examination of airport-ramp regulation in a generation. The Schiphol concession settlement, confirmed to dnata, KLM and Viggo, gives that abstract debate a concrete reference point: fewer handlers, stronger labour protections, but an open door for airline self-handling. Whether the Commission’s consultation translates into legislation that embeds those features across the single market is the question that airlines, handlers and airport workers across Europe will be watching when the portal closes on 28 October 2025.
This article draws on information from European Commission – DG Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) and reporting by European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) and Aviation Pros / Ground Support Worldwide.
Continue to follow The Aviation Hub for more analysis and insight.
Advertise with us Your brand, in front of an aviation audience Home page and in-article placements, sold directly, one advertiser per slot. From £250 a year. See the rates
.jpg){kind=link}