Near-disaster shows EU air traffic control is nowhere near good enough

"...But in dissecting the incident, the BEA investigators noted that Bordeaux and most French airports have no “reliable” means to identify which controllers have come into work, how long they stay or what functions they actually fulfil.

And like controllers across Europe, they still use slips of paper placed on a board to show where an aircraft is on a runway. The December 22 incident happened because one controller juggling four different jobs was so busy he forgot to place the slip on the board..."