EU Looking to Remove Iran Air Sanctions
The European Union will send aviation security experts to Iran in May, looking at removing Iran Air from an EU blacklist for unsafe airlines.
Iran Air was blacklisted in 2010 due to safety concerns with its planes, said Jakub Adamowicz, a spokesman for the European Commission, the bloc’s executive. Twelve of the airline’s planes were exempted from the ban, allowing the Iranian flag-carrier to maintain some service into Europe.
“What will happen now is that there will be technical assessments in May, to see if Iran Air solved the issues. These are technical discussions, not a political decision. The safety of flights is not conditioned by the nationality of an airline,” Mr. Adamowicz said.
The announcement comes after eight EU commissioners traveled to Tehran over the weekend to look at ways to boost ties between the bloc and Iran, the first such visit in years. The two sides announced a string of joint projects—from the energy sector to migration and joint research work—in a bid to broaden a bilateral relationship that was long restricted by the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
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