Thesis title: La realizzazione dei valori dell'Unione europea nelle attività spaziali: sicurezza e sostenibilità nel diritto spaziale europeo
From a legal perspective, outer space has acquired increasing resonance in the action of the European Union, while having shown, even before the attribution of an express competence in the Treaties, significant potential to support objectives, sectoral policies, and terrestrial needs. In light of the growing dependence of essential sectors of society on reliable, continuous, secure, safe, sustainable, and resilient space technologies, capabilities, and services, there is no doubt that these instruments contribute to the functioning, development, and prosperity of central areas of individual and collective life, thus participating in the construction of the material conditions through which the EU pursues its values. This research, therefore, investigates how European space policy contributes to the realization of these values and the role that safety, security, and sustainability assume within this process as concepts of European space law. As is well known, values guide the exercise of EU competences in both its internal and external action, without, however, extending their limits; additionally, they guide the pursuit of the Union’s objectives and, more specifically, the development of its policies, including those relating to scientific and technological sectors such as the space field. In this context, fundamental rights also become relevant as an integral part of the EU axiological system. Although their relation to space activities is often mediated, such initiatives may enable or strengthen public policies that affect fundamental rights, including but not limited to the rights to life, health, food, environmental protection, and access to information.
The contribution of the EU space policy to the realisation of its values and fundamental rights, as well as to its objectives and other policies, is examined in light of the context in which such policy is currently developing: a contingent reality in which the framework of values and rights is subject to growing tensions; a space sector that continues to experience a phase of rapid transformation, where the expansion of benefits is accompanied by the emergence of new vulnerabilities; and an EU legal framework regulating its space programmes and initiatives that is undergoing profound innovation in an attempt to maximise their potential, generate innovative solutions with high social impact and address an increasingly broad and varied range of risks and threats. The connection with the second part of the research question, focused on the role of safety, security, and sustainability, finds its rationale precisely in the restructuring process of the EU’s space activities formally initiated with the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2021/696, also known as the Space Regulation, and the legal acts connected to it.
The investigation is therefore based on three hypotheses. Firstly, European space policy is assuming an increasingly infrastructural and transversal role in the realization of the Union’s values, fundamental rights, objectives, and other policies. Secondly, the EU is adopting a new legal approach in the sector, characterized mainly by greater integration among space programmes, initiatives, and their applicable legal framework, as well as by a growing safety and security orientation. Finally, sustainability has acquired increasing relevance as a guiding parameter of the Union’s space action and as an interpretative criterion for the contribution that such action offers to its value framework.
In developing this research, the reference to the realization of the European Union’s values in space activities is understood in a broad sense. The investigation is not limited to verifying whether and to what extent these values are expressly recognised in EU space law, but examines the way in which the legal, infrastructural, and functional framework of European space activities contributes to creating the material, operational, and legal conditions favourable to the protection, development, and promotion of values and fundamental rights.
From this perspective, the first chapter is dedicated to the research framework. After examining the transversal nature of the Union’s space policy as an original and persistent feature of its action in the space sector, and reflecting on its evolutionary interpretation, the chapter analyses how EU space services contribute to the Union’s value framework. In methodological terms, the analysis is conducted using macro-categories that identify selected demonstrative functions highlighting the contribution under examination.
The second chapter then shifts its focus to the safety and security of the EU Space Programme, with the aim of verifying whether the legal framework established by the Space Regulation has brought about a substantive change in the European legal approach. Both concepts are analysed as technical-operational requirements for the protection of space infrastructures, systems, data, information, and services, and as conditions for the effectiveness of the contribution that such instruments may offer to the realization of values and fundamental rights. In a context in which essential sectors of public action and of individual and collective life increasingly depend on space technologies, infrastructures, and capabilities, the safety and security of the programme inter alia becomes a prerequisite for the continuity of services, the resilience of the public functions based on them, and, thus, the effective realization of values and exercise of fundamental rights. Particularly, the analysis focuses on safety and security principles and objectives, operational security, security accreditation, the protection of space and ground infrastructures, and information security. At the same time, the chapter shows that strengthening safety and security cannot be absolute, but must be balanced with other requirements, including the protection of personal data, transparency, and access to information, which are functional to guaranteeing those same values and fundamental rights that such strengthening seeks to protect.
Finally, the third chapter investigates Space Situational Awareness (SSA), specifically its Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) subcomponent. The latter constitutes a significant activity within the EU Space Programme because it is situated at the intersection of safety, sustainability, and resilience of space activities. Through the surveillance and tracking of space objects, including debris, it contributes to collision prevention, re-entry analysis, fragmentation monitoring, and, more generally, to the protection of users’ space assets. Consequently, its relevance concerns the safety of space activities in the strict sense and the preservation of the infrastructures and services on which essential sectors and public policies of the Union and its Member States depend. In this sense, SST contributes to the realization of values and fundamental rights both indirectly, by protecting the conditions for the functioning of space services, and directly, insofar as its services support the management of risks that can affect people, property, infrastructures, and the environment. The chapter reconstructs the development of SSA and SST capabilities at the European level, the regulation of activities and services under the current legal framework, the provisions governing access to the subcomponent by European and international users, the multilevel governance of SST and its data policy, highlighting the major legal complexities connected to a highly sensitive system.
Overall, the research aims to demonstrate that safety, security, and sustainability are not merely technical or sectoral aspects of European space policy, but rather legal categories of a different nature through which EU space law contributes to making the value-based function of space activities possible, stable, and durable. Safety and security are conditions for the continuity and reliability of space systems and services; sustainability is also a parameter aimed at preserving the accessibility and usability of outer space for the benefit of present and future generations in the long term. It is precisely in their interaction that these concepts make it possible to read the Union’s space activities as one of the fields in which the material and legal conditions for the realization of European values are increasingly being defined.