Professor Frans von der Dunk presented, “A Long and Winding Road – Towards an EU Space Law?” at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy.
The abstract for the article is below:
Currently, an initiative to establish an ‘EU Space Law’ is developed within the bosom of the European Commission, the quasi-legislative organ of the European Union. The general idea is to promulgate common EU rules addressing the safety, resilience and sustainability of space activities and operations, further to more narrowly focused EU space initiatives such as flagship projects Galileo and Kopernikus and the establishment of a common market for satellite communications. This initiative raises a number of legal issues. How would any resulting EU Space Law relate to international space law, notably the core UN space treaties addressing responsibility and liability for space activities and obligations such as registration of space objects? How would the private sector be incorporated in this effort, given that more and more national jurisdictions fundamentally take care of authorization and continuing supervision of their activities in or involving outer space? How would the proposal relate to Article 189 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, notably providing the European Union with some measure of ‘space competence’ but at the same time precluding any efforts to harmonize (existing) national legislation on matters of space and space activities? How would it interfere with the role that the European Space Agency has so long played in shaping European interests in space and space activities? Noting that the ultimate outcome and shape of the initiative is as of yet uncertain, the present paper presents an attempt to answer those questions and some related ones as far as possible at this stage.
