Court of Justice 12 March 2026, C-1/24 (Opinion of Advocate General Ćapeta delivered on 12 March 2026.)

Also known as

In Opinion procedure 1/24, Advocate General Ćapeta opines that the European Union does not possess exclusive competence to conclude the envisaged comprehensive Air Transport Agreement with the Sultanate of Oman in its entirety, because the EU's shared competence to grant traffic rights to third countries has not been exercised internally through common rules, meaning Article 3(2) TFEU exclusivity cannot be established on the basis of either necessity or the ERTA effect with respect to the grant of traffic rights under Article 3(2) of the envisaged agreement. The Advocate General nonetheless concludes that several other provisions of Title I of the envisaged agreement—including those on fair competition (Article 8), customs duties and taxes (Article 11), operating authorisations (Articles 4 and 5), compliance with laws (Article 7), commercial opportunities (Article 10), user charges (Article 12), and tariffs (Article 13)—do overlap with and risk affecting common EU rules, thereby falling within exclusive EU competence under Article 3(2) TFEU. Accordingly, the Advocate General proposes that the Court answer that the European Union lacks exclusive competence to conclude the agreement as a whole, with the competence to grant traffic rights to third countries remaining within the shared competence of the European Union and its Member States.AI