This chapter reviews
the position of the European Union as a supranational community of states that
has crafted its competence to deliver Union-own space programmes, whilst
respecting the domain of space as a preserve of its sovereign Member States in
the field of international space law
In illustrating the
EU’s competence to regulate activities in the space sector, in parallel to its Member
States, the paper reviews the steps by which the EU has contributed towards
developments in space law, as it converges with separate, digital-market driven
rules of data protection, open data and artificial intelligence. The value of
legal provisions in setting out the best possible regulatory models, equally
applicable to the Union, is that they serve legal certainty and in the context
of space activities, sustainability of current and future operations.