On 25 June 2025 the European Commission unveiled COM(2025) 335, the proposal for a Regulation on the safety, resilience and environmental sustainability of space activities in the Union — popularly designated as the EU Space Act1. The initiative aspires to consolidate a hitherto fragmented landscape characterised, according to the Commission’s own assessment, by thirteen divergent national regimes; it pursues the simultaneous objectives of legal certainty, competitiveness and the harmonisation of safety, resilience and sustainability standards. With its envisaged entry into force on 1 January 2030, the proposal is positioned within an unmistakable lineage: the decade-long stratification of European digital law that has produced, in sequence, the General Data Protection Regulation (2016), the NIS2 Directive on cybersecurity (2022), the Digital Services Act (2022), the Data Act (2023) and the Artificial Intelligence Act.
EU Space Act, Data Protection and Artificial Intelligence: Continuity and Discontinuity with the EU Digital Regulations
Giovanni Maria Riccio
2026
Abstract
On 25 June 2025 the European Commission unveiled COM(2025) 335, the proposal for a Regulation on the safety, resilience and environmental sustainability of space activities in the Union — popularly designated as the EU Space Act1. The initiative aspires to consolidate a hitherto fragmented landscape characterised, according to the Commission’s own assessment, by thirteen divergent national regimes; it pursues the simultaneous objectives of legal certainty, competitiveness and the harmonisation of safety, resilience and sustainability standards. With its envisaged entry into force on 1 January 2030, the proposal is positioned within an unmistakable lineage: the decade-long stratification of European digital law that has produced, in sequence, the General Data Protection Regulation (2016), the NIS2 Directive on cybersecurity (2022), the Digital Services Act (2022), the Data Act (2023) and the Artificial Intelligence Act.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
