Croatia is at the crossroads between Central Europe, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. What operational and technical challenges are you facing?
Croatia Control Ltd. is an active promoter of regional integration and co-operation within the SES, including participation in the COOPANS Alliance and FAB Central Europe. To be among the top providers, it strives towards a permanent enhancement of competence and performance, while respecting legislation and international standards, and paying special attention to the environmental management.
Croatia Control Ltd. takes appropriate action to decrease fuel consumption of airspace users, and, in cooperation with its partners, has continued the implementation of the cross-border Free Route Airspace projects such as SEAFRA, where the night FRA has been established over 4 states.
To achieve high performance, we are using state-of-the-art technology, such as Thales Top Sky ATM system, Frequentis VCS, and others. Continuous modernisation is essential because of interoperability and other requirements, while the planning of technical projects has to be at a high level in order to meet the appropriate milestones. We are exposed to extreme changes in the traffic demand - low traffic in wintertime, high traffic in the summer months, but also there are weekly variations where weekends are busier, and the variations during different periods of the day. So the rostering and the organisation of shifts has to be continuously managed, controlled, and updated as necessary.

SESAR, FABs, Deployment Manager, performance, how is Croatia Control addressing the changes introduced with the Single European Sky?
Although Croatia became the EU member in 2013, we had started to apply SES standards early, under ECAA agreement arrangements. We skipped RP1 and we really had to make much effort in order to make a good plan for RP2. That task was performed in close cooperation with our NSA, and partners from other FAB CE members.
In SESAR1, we contributed to the late phase, in the large scale demonstration of Top Link project, but in the SESAR2020 and SESAR Deployment Manager we have become much more active, as a part of COOPANS, and agreed the partnership with ENAV and other A6 members.
Croatia Control Ltd. as a member of COOPANS joined the SESAR Deployment Alliance, which has been appointed by the European Commission as the SESAR Deployment Manager (SDM).
Due to the fact that SES requirements have to be followed, many changes in the processes within the organisation had to be done, putting much effort in respective activities.
COOPANS is an excellent and an unique example in Europe of a long-term partnership where 5 ANSPs of Austria (Austro Control), Croatia (Croatia Control), Denmark (Naviair), Ireland (Irish Aviation Authority) and Sweden (LFV) have a completely harmonized ATM system which is one of the most state-of-the-art and the safest systems of that type, by means of which they fulfilled the preconditions for the achievement of SES goals.
The harmonisation of functionalities and joint investments enable the implementation of an advanced and unified air traffic control system. COOPANS has structured the development and deployment process around joint activities, such as common specification, operational documentation, validation, training materials and generic safety cases.

What are your key priorities for the future, at national and international level?
High performance is the main priority. From the long-term perspective, it is essential to ensure international cooperation. COOPANS stands as the leading example in Europe of an industrial partnership with cooperation between multiple ANSPs leading to cost saving and other benefits.

The role of ANSPs is changing, how can cooperation among ANSPs help in achieving your objectives?
The cooperation is of utmost importance. We have already mentioned COOPANS, FAB CE as the main international arrangements. However, SEAFRA project is an excellent example of a bottom-up approach aiming to offer high-level services to our users. Therefore, we see many opportunities for cooperation with our neighbours, including ENAV, our A6 partner.