EU Space Act – new rules for safe, resilient and sustainable space activities
Feedback from the US department of State:
The United States welcomes the opportunity to provide comments to the European Commission (Commission) in response to the solicitation for public feedback on a proposal to develop a new EU Space Act, which would create a single common market within the EU for space activities and develop new legal and regulatory frameworks pertaining to safety, resilience, and environmental sustainability. As a general matter, the United States expresses deep concern regarding measures in the proposed Act that would impose unacceptable regulatory burdens on U.S. providers of space services to European customers. As close partners in civil, commercial, and security aspects of space cooperation for decades, the EU should proceed cautiously when developing and refining the proposed EU Space Act to ensure it provides a permissive and adaptable framework that promotes innovation, investment, and fair competition for the U.S., EU, and EU member states commercial sectors, while respecting each other's sovereignty. Otherwise, the ability of the United States, the EU, and EU members to maintain government-to-government burden-sharing partnerships could be threatened. These non-tariff barriers would introduce challenges in the areas of space weather, remote sensing, space exploration, spaceflight safety, space debris mitigation and remediation, communications, as well as cooperations with the European Space Agency. The United States has been closely following the development of the EU Space Act and recalls commitments made by the EU in the August 21, 2025, United States-EU Framework on an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair and Balanced Trade to resolve trade imbalances, improve market access, increase our trade and investment relationship, and reduce or eliminate non-tariff barriers. The current draft EU Space Act contradicts the spirit of this Framework Agreement.
The U.S. and E.U. have cooperated on space matters for years—to the benefit of both continents.
As these comments state, though, the U.S. expresses deep concern regarding E.U. measures that would impose unacceptable regulatory burdens on U.S. providers.
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