The European Union is poised to quickly abolish Europe’s fragmented national airspaces, which it says exacerbated disruptions in air travel recently when more than 100,000 flights were grounded because of ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

The blanket closure of skyways over Europe has sparked accusations that some national regulators overreacted to the ash cloud. Analysts point to the structure in which each country made its own airspace decisions as the primary source of confusion during the volcanic ash crisis.

“The worst is now over, but there is a huge amount of work to be done to deal with crisis management,” EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas told reporters in Brussels.

German officials have invited EU leaders, aviation experts and industry representatives to Berlin for a meeting on April 27 that aims to plot a course to establish a unified airspace system. EU transport ministers are also scheduled for an emergency meeting in Brussels on May 4 for discussions about fast-tracking the plan. Under the desired wholesale reform of Europe’s air traffic system, all of the continent’s skyways would be under a single regulatory body rather than decisions being left to individual countries. The single European sky concept would transform Europe’s separate systems into a seamless model similar to that of the United States.

“The volcanic ash crisis that paralyzed European air transport for nearly a week made it crystal clear that the Single European Sky is a critical missing link in Europe’s infrastructure,” said Giovanni Bisignani, the director general of International Air Transport Association.

Economists predict that Single European Sky would also improve the EU’s economic competitiveness significantly, because the current disjointed framework costs the industry around $6.7 billion each year.

News of Europe streamlining its skyways, and Germany spearheading the project, will come as no surprise to regular Trumpet readers who have seen Germany steer the continent toward unification with increasing speed over the years. To understand the prophetic significance of the EU’s steadily building power, read Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.