While it was hard to tell on Tuesday, the government of France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, says it actually strongly supports the idea of a unified regional airspace. But French officials do not like the way Brussels is trying to cajole its 27 member states toward that goal.

Since the fall, Siim Kallas, the European transport commissioner, has been trying to turn up the heat on member states like France that are seen to be dragging their feet. It was a decade ago that European officials proposed legislation to replace a crazy quilt of air traffic control fiefs that officials say account for about $6.5 billion in unnecessary costs each year. The measure was passed by the European Parliament in 2009 and subsequently endorsed by France and all other member states.

Last year, Mr. Kallas threatened legal action and fines against member states for not meeting key milestones of the legislation. On Tuesday, he proposed ways to to inject fresh momentum into the process by granting significant new decision-making powers to Eurocontrol, an agency in Brussels that is already responsible for coordinating air traffic flows across the Union and an additional 12 nearby countries.

His proposals include a measure to separate national regulation of air travel from traffic management services, as well as a mandate that state-owned monopoly providers of navigation, weather forecasting, surveillance and other services be privatized. But Mr. Kallas’s proposals require approval from the European Parliament and member states.

It is these proposals that have angered Paris. In an interview Tuesday, France’s transport minister, Frédéric Cuvillier, said the initiative amounted to “regulatory harassment.” He accused Brussels of trying to rush through one-size-fits-all changes that did not take into account differences in the way member states have historically managed their own airspace.

“It is necessary that these things happen in a spirit of respect for differences in national organization,” Mr. Cuvillier said. “We have to give it time.”

And just to show France was not alone, Mr. Cuvillier said he had persuaded his German counterpart, Peter Ramsauer, to sign a joint letter to Mr. Kallas, asking him to delay presenting his new proposals to the European Parliament.