From Here to 2023: Civil Drones Operations and the Setting of New Legal Rules for the European Single Sky

The paper deals with the legal facets of the Single European Sky strategy and the reform of today’s European air traffic management network for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). The aim of this strategy is to guarantee standards on safety, efficiency and environmental impact of the air traffic, so as to let drones progressively sharing it. The paper scrutinizes the ways in which the European Commission and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) intend to attain this end by September 2023. In addition, the paper sheds light on some of the troubles with this roadmap. First, it is all about the clarification and implementation of the regulations and guidelines set up by both EASA and the Commission. Second, problems of coordination persist among different regulatory authorities in multiple legal domains, e.g. the interaction between civil aviation law authorities and data protection authorities. Third, most solutions on a risk-based regulation, markets integration, and the design of law-abiding drones should involve the UAS sector industries. The latter are an essential factor for the adoption of new technological standards and still, the definition of such standards brings us back to the coordination problems mentioned above. Whether or not these problems on rules, standards and coordination for the governance of law-abiding drones will obstruct the agenda for a Single European Sky remains an open question. But, it seems fair to admit such problems will increasingly attract the attention of scholars over the next years.