Diluting the EU-wide rights of passengers who suffer excessive delays or are denied boarding would be akin to the EU "scoring an own goal", Kozma Złotowski MEP said today as Parliament’s Committee on Transport and Tourism delivered a stinging rebuke to the Council's efforts to erode the landmark law, known as Regulation 261.

Mr Złotowski, ECR Group shadow rapporteur on the file in the TRAN committee, said the committee’s vote was also an embarrassment for the Polish presidency of the Council, which rushed through a file which had been deadlocked for more than a decade “in a desperate attempt to salvage something they could call an achievement.”

The committee vote sets up a battle of wills between the co-legislators, some two decades after the popular law was passed to protect and compensate travellers facing long delays, cancelled flights and overbooked planes.

Mr Złotowski said:

“Pushing this through the Council in this way was a colossal error of judgment which only appears to have united the Parliament in a more emphatic manner.

“The committee has made its views very clear about the value and importance of this legislation to the millions of Europeans who take flights every day.”

The file will now be voted on in July’s plenary session and then be subject to inter-institutional negotiations.