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The United States and European Union will renew a dogfight next week in negotiations to throw their skies open to unregulated competition among their airlines.
The last round of the "open skies" talks held in Brussels last month achieved "substantial progress", the two sides said.
But some of the thorniest questions in the lucrative but politically sensitive transatlantic aviation sector are still on the table as US and European Commission negotiators prepare to meet from Monday.
The aim is to do away with the existing patchwork of bilateral agreements between various EU members and the United States and set up one system regulating transatlantic air transport.
There are two major issues to resolve.
One involves scrapping so-called cabotage arrangements so that a European airline could fly from any EU member state to a US airport and then on to another US destination.
Whereas now British Airways, for example, can fly London to New York, it cannot then proceed to service domestic US routes such as Chicago or Atlanta.
US airlines can fly Washington to Paris, for instance, and then on to Rome. But they cannot then head beyond Europe to points east in Asia.
At last month's Brussels talks, Washington agreed to allow European carriers to fly from anywhere in the EU to any single point in the United States.
In return, the United States is seeking an agreement that would allow its carriers to fly from Europe onto third countries, and vice versa for European carriers.
Another bone of contention are ownership limits that curtail the ability of foreign investors to take stakes in US or EU airlines.
The United States limits foreign investment in its airlines to 25 percent. The EU has a higher ceiling of 49 percent.
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