On April 8, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) will gain legal competence to take over the operations and pilot licensing tasks that have been performed by the Joint Aviation Authorities.

By June 30, "the JAA system, including the JAA Liason Office [at EASA] will be closed", according to a decision announced by the European Civil Aviation Conference on March 19.

The JAA has been carrying on the tasks of setting common European standards for operations by all aircraft categories, and for flight crew licensing, while EASA and the European Commission prepared themselves to take on regulatory responsibility for these areas. EASA was already the airworthiness regulator.

The JAA chief executive Andre Auer says that, to begin with, EASA will continue to regulate using the Joint Aviation Requirements (JAR) in operations and FCL, but transposition of the JARs into EU law should be complete by about 2012.

The only role JAA will retain at its Hoofddorp base near Amsterdam is providing training for national aviation authority staff at the non-EASA states that have been voluntary JAA members.

ECAC says EASA is pledged "to establish a liaison function in early 2009 which will take care of the legitimate wish of all to maintain the pan-European approach, and to help the non-EASA JAA member states in becoming associated with EASA".