Drones for Civil Use: European Perspective on Third-Party Liability and Insurance

For many years drones have been widely used for military missions. More than 30 nations are developing or manufactoring over 250 drone models and over few years the development and operation of European unmanned aircraft - either military or civilian - will be one of the most important challenges and, at the same time, one of the biggest opportunities for the European Community and its industries, allowing them to stay in the vanguard of technological and commercial development in the aerospace industry. Whereas the military drones market has been steadily growing, civil drones operations have developed quite slowly, due, to some extent, to the lack of a regulatory framework. The civil use of drones could be significant and extensive: policing activities, traffic management and monitoring, fisheries protection, pipeline surveying, coverage of large public events, border patrol, agricultural management, power line surveying, aerial photography, global envinronmental monitoring and security related operations and many other possible applications. However, these vital activities can only be carried out if drones are able to fly with other air traffic, beyond segregates areas and within national or international airspace. Where it has been identified that existing reguolations cannot accommodate civil drones, a regulatory framework needs to be developed to determine what Technologies or procedures are essential for achieving the objective of a safe introduction of drones for civil purposes. The absense of a clear legal framework has recently forced the European Union and international organizations and institutions to address the mater of regulation, highlighting the numerous legal problems created by their use. This article will examine the recent interventions of the European institutions, which show the EU's awareness in setting up a framework regulation in order to allow this new type of Aircraft to fly in the common airspace. Nevertheless, awareness is not enough for achieving thsi objective when the legal instruments remain unclear. In the following pages, we will try to identify some of them.