The European Commission presented, on Tuesday 29 November, its ‘Drone 2.0’ strategy, which should enable the further development of the European market for this type of aircraft. One of the purposes of the text, according to the Commission, is to secure the support of European citizens by reassuring them about issues such as noise, privacy and security, before moving forward with the technology.
“With the arrival of a new generation of electrically powered aircraft capable of operating in an urban and regional environment, we need to ensure that, beyond maintaining the safety of operations in our skies, conditions meet both the operators’ commercial needs and citizens’ expectations with regard to privacy and security”, commented the Commissioner for Transport, Adina Vălean.
In detail, the Commission intends to focus first on the adoption of common rules on airworthiness. These new rules should be accompanied by new requirements for the training of pilots of unmanned aircraft and manned vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
One part of the text is dedicated to funding and the creation of an online platform that should help local and industry actors to implement sustainable “Innovative Air Mobility”.
In addition, a Strategic Drone Technology Roadmap should be developed. The aim of the strategy is to identify priority areas for research and innovation in order to reduce existing strategic dependencies and avoid the emergence of new ones.
The text also includes a list of criteria for a new voluntary label, which should be created to indicate that a drone is approved and compliant in terms of cyber security.
Finally, one part of the strategy presented by the Commission is also dedicated to the development of synergies between civil, security and military uses of UAVs.
The publication of the Commission’s strategy comes at a time when the Commission estimates that drone services will be omnipresent in the lives of European citizens by 2030 in a wide range of areas, such as emergency services, mapping, urgent delivery of small consignments, air taxis and scheduled passenger services.
“With the right framework in place, the drone services market in Europe could be worth €14.5 billion, and create 145,000 jobs, by 2030”, Ms Vălean concluded.
See the document: https://aeur.eu/f/4cc (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)