Forty seven near misses.

The Performance Review report for 2010 has just been published. It highlights one main point regarding safety, but first let me tell you, to my knowledge, how the reports are done. If you are really interested you can check the Eurocontrol PRR 2010, available on the internet. I am obviously only going to disclose the important data from my (admittedly biased) position.
That said, the data Eurocontrol publishes has previously been forwarded by the Air Navigation Service Providers, they usually follow Eurocontrol criteria for category classification, and they are also usually backed by the expertise of the national safety supervising authority (in Spain, AESA, Agencia Española de Seguridad Aérea). There are occasional discrepancies from the general rule, but basically the data is perfectly comparable.
Regarding the classification criteria, suffice it to say that, to avoid being too technical, they are class A (near collision), class B (Safety not guaranteed), and others. Either of the two former are very serious incidents. Of course, where humans operate the system, mistakes are prone to occur. So I’ll just give you the data for class A incidents for countries comparable to Spain and let you arrive at your own conclusions.
France ---14
Germany --- 4
UK (Nats) --- 0
SPAIN --- 47
I was going to leave it there, but Aena adds a line saying that none of the Spanish near collisions was due to ATM (Air Traffic Management). Yes, I also wondered at first whether pilots had just gone berserk and had decided to ram into each other. Obviously, our magnificent management staff had just decided that having Spanish controllers work half as much more than British or German controllers, or calling them for duty on their day off (compulsory attendance, remember), or cancelling their holidays once their plane tickets and hotels were booked, or leaving them for years on end without touching a simulator, or allowing one day’s rest out of each six; or endorsing their English level, not because they had had enough training but because they have never been entangled in a language related incident before, had nothing to do with their professional capacity.
Fortunately, we know the figures and we are doing our best to improve safety, but it isn’t easy. I’ll write about that soon.