This paper examines the legality of using Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) as a counterspace weapon. RPO enables a satellite to approach, inspect, or manoeuvre in proximity to another object, allowing kinetic or non-kinetic attacks, electronic interference, or intelligence gathering, sometimes pretending to be engaged in civilian activity. While the weaponization of space has been widely discussed, the legality of specific technologies such as RPO remains underexplored. Under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, employing RPO as a kinetic or non-kinetic weapon may constitute a 'use of force', This would apply even fi it only partially damages the target, given the irreversibility and high value of space assets. RPO's unique features should also be considered: its ability to image and exert pressure on another satellite during its proximity operation even prior to any actual attack. While imaging alone, similarly to cyber espionage, may not violate international law, proximity operations intended to intimidate may amount to a 'threat of force'. This paper concludes that legal analysis, involvement of technical experts, and tailored governance frameworks focusing on RPO's distinctive challenges are essential.
Recent technological developments have enabled the storage and processing of data directly in outer space, including through emerging concepts of space-based data centres. This development challenges the traditional assumption that data are stored within terrestrial infrastructures subject to clear territorial jurisdiction. As data processing moves beyond Earth, questions arise as to whether existing data privacy rules can apply in an environment that is not subject to territorial sovereignty.This article examines the applicability of data privacy law to on orbit data processing, with particular attention to the European legal framework. It considers the jurisdictional structure of international space law and assesses the relevance of international human rights law and the GDPR. The analysis is supported by four case studies addressing space-based data centres, remote sensing data, Big Data, and space tourism.The article argues that while existing privacy rules may apply in certain circumstances, their effectiveness is limited by jurisdictional complexity, enforcement constraints, and the absence of reregulation of privacy tailored to space environment. It concludes that from a European perspective, in the absence of a dedicated international treaty, soft law instruments, contractual practices, and emerging European regulatory initiatives may play an important role in addressing data privacy concerns beyond Earth.
The space tourism industry has gained significant momentum in recent years. Several companies have developed ambitious plans to organize the transportation of tourists to space. The development of space tourism activities raises some challenging legal questions. Emerging challenges include issues related to the legal status of space tourists and the applicable law, as well as registration and liability issues.This article examines the legal framework for space tourism activities in the United Arab Emirates, how the UAE legislature addresses the complex legal issues raised by these activities, the solutions adopted to overcome these challenges, and the effectiveness of these solutions in providing legal certainty to ensure the sustainability and development of these activities.This article concludes that the UAE legislature has taken significant steps in regulating space tourism activities and overcoming the legal obstacles hindering their development. It also emphasizes the need to continue improving and developing space law to align with the unique nature of space tourism activities.
From 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026, the aviation and space sectors have seen notable developments in EU competition law. The European Commission cleared the Safran/Collins and Boeing/Spirit mergers only after securing structural divestment commitments, while unconditionally approving several other transactions including the SES/Intelsat consolidation. State aid activity focused on the amendment and management of existing cases, as well as approval of new aid for regional airports, as well as for sustainable aviation fuel and space research. The period also saw significant judicial activity, with the General Court dismissing Ryanair’s challenges to COVID-19-related State aid decisions and the Court of Justice delivering judgments in the long-running air cargo cartel cases.
The Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) is Africa’s most ambitious aviation liberalization initiative to date. However, progress towards making SAATM a reality has been frustratingly slow. This article argues that SAATM’s main limiting factor pertains to the lack of compulsory supranational adjudication that can convert policy pledges into enforceable rights. A reading of the Yamoussoukro Decision’s (YD’s) dispute settlement provision (Annex 3), the African Union (AU) Constitutive Act and the African Civil Aviation Commission’s (AFCAC’s) enforcement powers show that SAATM commitments are currently designed to be aspirational rather than self-executing. Drawing on the European Union (EU) experience, this article explains how doctrines of compulsory jurisdiction, direct effect and judicial supremacy allowed the EU Court of Justice to constitutionalize the EU’s internal market freedoms and underpin market actors’ expectations. While consent-based arbitration decides individual cases under SAATM, it does not foster consistent interpretations or systemic compliance. Meaningful liberalization will require a more solid and effective supranational constitutionalization of the AU legal order. Hence, this article concludes that without binding enforcement mechanisms, SAATM will remain a liberalization framework rather than a single aviation market. This article forms part of a broader research project examining institutional design in aviation dispute settlement. For a complementary analysis that proposes a detailed institutional model for both African and global aviation dispute resolution.
The Court ofJustice of the EU (CJEU) has ruled in the case of Republic of Austria v. Austrian Arilines AG that the legal framework of the single European sky protects the economic rights of airspace users in case the air navigation service provider fails to provide its services. It confirmed its earlier judgement of 2022 in the case of Skeyes, the Belgian air navigation service provider. The court did not follow the opinion of the advocate general who had asked a reversal from the Skyes judgement. The airline claiming damages from the air navigation service provider must proceed under national law to do so.
From 1 August 2025 to 31 March 2026, there have been several new court decisions concerning air passenger rights. The first part of this article highlights recent decisions from the Court of Justice of the European Union (the Court) and the General Court of the European Union (the General Court) that have shed light on the interpretation of EU Regulation No. 261/2004, the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (Montreal Convention 1999) and Regulation (EU) No. 1215/2012. The second part presents a nonexhaustive overview of selected significant rulings from non-EU countries. In AirHelp Germany GmbH v. Austrian Airlines AG (C-399/24), the Court confirmed that a lightning strike constitutes an 'extraordinary circumstance' under Article 5(3) of Regulation 261/2004. In Corendon Airlines v. Myflyright (C-558/24), it held that delay must be assessed against the originally scheduled arrival time, notwithstanding prior notification of postponement. In Verein fur Konsumenten information v. KLM (C-45/24), the Court ruled that reimbursement under Article 8(1)(a) includes intermediary commissions. Under the Montreal Convention 1999, in Felic & iacute;sima v. Iberia (C-218/24), the Court confirmed that pets qualify as 'baggage' within Article 17(2), subject to the liability limits of Article 22(2). Separately, in Deutsche Lufthansa v. AirHelp (C-551/24), the Court clarified that assignment of claims does not affect jurisdiction under Article 7(1)(b) of Regulation 1215/2012. At General Court level, in D S.A. v. P S.A. (T-134/25), air traffic management decisions were held capable of constituting extraordinary circumstances, subject to a strict assessment and a direct causal link. In NI and HZ v. European Air Charter (T-656/24), the General Court clarified that such a link is broken where delays result primarily from the carrier's own operational decisions. Outside the EU, courts have increasingly emphasized carrier responsibility and evidentiary discipline. In Air Canada v. Landry (2026 ONSC 222) and Jutras v. Air Canada (2026 QCCS 420), Canadian courts strengthened obligations relating to rebooking and contractual performance. In Brazil, REsp 2.232.322/MT restricted moral damages to cases of proven harm, while ARE 1.560.244 (Tema 1417) limited the suspension of litigation to force majeure scenarios. In Air India v. Sundarapariporanam (2025), airlines were held liable for outsourced onboard services, and in Mexico (Tesis aislada No. 2031818), denial of boarding due to system failure was attributed to the carrier.
Aviation decarbonization depends on cooperation among competitors, yet competition law considerations can affect such efforts. Airlines increasingly pursue collaborative sustainability initiatives, including joint offtake of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), interoperable bookand-claim registries, and shared monitoring and verification frameworks. This article argues that competition law frameworks in the EU and United Kingdom (UK) are evolving - albeit unevenly - to accommodate such sustainability collaboration, while the US remains more uncertain. It shows that regulatory fragmentation across SAF definitions, carbon-pricing regimes, and compliance rules both increases the need for private coordination and complicates its legal design. After mapping this fragmented landscape, including Carbon Offsetting and ReFuelEU, and the UK SAF Mandate, the article analyses recent EU, UK, and US competition law developments. It proposes a safe-harbour-plus blueprint for airline sustainability collaboration, based on open standard-setting, joint SAF procurement with safeguards, and interoperable registries. Properly structured, such cooperation can satisfy competition law requirements while enabling aviation decarbonization. The analysis demonstrates that competition law can facilitate - not merely constrain - collective climate action in fragmented regulatory environments.
This article presents a new structured methodology for categorizing and analysing cybersecurity regulations relevant to European Space Agency’s (ESAs) navigation programmes. It introduces a ten-category system that organizes European Union (EU) norms affecting cybersecurity, thereby enabling a systematic assessment of their applicability. The analysis distinguishes between regulations that directly impact navigation programmes and those with no operational relevance. By demonstrating how this categorization streamlines compliance checks, improves audit consistency, and anticipates future regulatory developments, the article highlights the value of a legal analysis in strengthening the cyber resilience of the European navigation sector, which has an impact of EUR 260 billion market and five billion users.
The 2nd Conference on Earth-Space Sustainability, co-organized by the International Institute of Air and Space Law, the European Research Council (ERC) PlanetStewards Project (Grant Agreement No. 101117483), the Secure World Foundation, and the COST Action FOGOS (CA 23118), was held at Leiden University’s Academy Building. (See for details and a link to the full programme: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/law/institute-of-public-law/institute-of-air-space-law/events/2nd-conference-on-earth-space-sustainability-law-stew ardship-equity) As part of the broader Earth-Space Sustainability (ESS) Network, the event brought together an internationally diverse cohort of humanities and social science researchers, legal scholars, policymakers, astronomers, philosophers, and industry practitioners to address some of the most pressing governance challenges of our time. The conference focused on the intertwined futures of Earth and outer space and what emerged was a collective call to move beyond the siloes that have long separated diverse disciplines in their approaches to sustainability governance: to treat Earth-Space as a single, integrated system demanding integrated responses to fragmented issues. (Yap, X.-S., & Truffer, B. (2022). Contouring ‘earth-space sustainability’. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 44, 185-193., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.06.004), (Yap, X.-S., & Kim, R. E. (2023). Towards earth-space governance in a multi-planetary era. Earth System Governance, 16, [100173], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2023.100173)
This report summarizes the key themes and discussions from the 2025 Symposium 'Navigating the Horizons: The Evolution and Future of Air and Space Law', held in The Hague, The Netherlands. The event gathered leading academics, practitioners, policymakers, members of the journal's editorial community, and representatives from industry and international institutions to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Wolters Kluwer's journal Air & Space Law. Discussions addressed the evolution of air and space law, emerging regulatory challenges, higher airspace operations, sustainability, and the increasingly interconnected nature of aviation and space activities.
This article argues that 'environment' is not an auxiliary concern in the governance of outer space but its central structuring principle. Building on James Ormrod's sociological framework, it reconstructs five regulatory 'productions' of outer space as environment: as a resource environment, a risk environment, a wilderness, a research environment, and a cultural environment. Each production reveals how environmental thinking shapes the legal and institutional architecture of space governance, from resource extraction and debris mitigation to planetary protection and heritage preservation. By situating environmental considerations at the core rather than the periphery of regulation, the article reframes the Outer Space Treaty's (OST's) principles of use, exploration, and non-appropriation as environmental norms. This unified view exposes the interdependence between commercial, scientific, and ethical dimensions of space activity and highlights the need for coherent, sustainability-oriented regulation. It concludes that recognizing outer space as environment provides a normative and interpretative framework capable of integrating fragmented legal regimes and guiding future law- and policy-making toward equitable and durable space governance.
Digitalisation and advanced communication technologies are poised to enable the deployment of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in non-segregated airspace through Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), including those that are autonomous. This transition shifts the primary source of accident risk from human error to product defect. As such, it is critical to assess the adequacy of the relevant compensation mechanisms. The Consumer Protection Act 1987 (CPA 1987) is the primary tool that imposes strict liability on producers for defective products in the UK; however, it was drafted before the widespread deployment of interconnected cyber-physical systems and self-learning algorithms. This article evaluates the application of the CPA 1987 to UAS, arguing it is unable to cater for digital technologies, including (but not limited) to defining the 'product', establishing post-supply liability, and addressing the burden of prooffor AI applications. Furthermore, it argues that reliance on the operator focused section 76 (2)-(4) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 (CAA 1982) transfers the burden of product defects onto UAS operators. Building upon the new EU Product Liability Directive (PLD), this article concludes that the existing product liability framework of the UK is inadequate and requires reform.
The Annex 13 report of the investigation offlight PS752 accident released by Iran has been criticized by a number of states. It is alleged that the Iranian accident investigation authority failed to comply with the provisions of Annex 13 during investigation, and also failed to include important facts in the report. The procedure which was followed by Iran reiterates a challenge with Annex 13 reports which in some cases, have not been accepted by participating states and states with special interest in the investigation on the basis of the report being inaccurate. A problem posed by an inaccurate Annex 13 report is that such report is unlikely to offer genuine safety information to prevent future occurrences, and thus negates the intent of Article 26 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation. This article, using Flight PS752 accident investigation as a reference, interrogates the validation of Annex 13 reports. The article concludes that the problem of inaccurate reporting and controversies surrounding Annex 13 reports can be addressed through a validation process where the reports will be reviewed. The article makes a through the Air Navigation Commission (ANC) to ensure its accuracy, and compliance of investigations with Annex 13.
This report summarizes the themes and discussions of the 37th Annual Conference of the European Air Law Association, held in Vienna, Austria. The conference brought together representatives of the industry, legal practitioners, academics and regulators. It shed light on current legal challenges and anticipated ongoing regulatory reforms relevant for the aviation industry. The discussions revolved around the following main themes: modernization of air traffic management (ATM), the complex regulatory nature of business aviation, the competitiveness of European carriers on the global market, the nationality rules of airlines and the ongoing reform ofpassenger protection legislation.
This article examines the Italian Law on the Space Economy (l. n. 89/2025) as one of the most advanced expressions of how states are redefining the governance of private space activities in the era of the new space economy. The Law innovatively combines classical authorization and supervision mechanisms with economic planning tools, expansive definitions, stringent technical requirements, and pervasive security-driven assessments. Through an analysis of its structure and key provisions, the article highlights both the virtues and challenges of this approach. Ultimately, the article argues that the Italian Law represents a paradigmatic example of 'New Space Law': a more complex regulatory model shaped by market dynamics, technological change, environmental concerns and security considerations.
