This article, however, argues that indeed, following the examples of a growing number of spacefaring states around the world discussed in some detail as far as, in particular, liability and attendant insurance issues are concerned, India should also develop such a national space law. On the one hand, it is shown to allow states to implement their international obligations under space law in a comprehensive fashion, and for example properly deal with the liability they may incur for private space activities. On the other hand, it would create a considerable measure of clarity for private parties interested in contributing to the general space effort in terms of the rights and obligations they would take upon themselves in doing so.

The main conclusion drawn for India following the extended analysis by the present article is that, unless it would insist on precluding any private sector involvement in space activities, both by Indian companies and by foreign companies operating in or from India and, going decidedly against the global trends, would attempt to roll back any such existing developments in this respect, there can be little doubt that India needs some sort of national legal framework dealing with private activities in outer space by means essentially of a licensing system.

At the least, this would be necessary for the compliance with key obligations resting upon India under the international space law treaties, pertaining to such issues as responsibility, liability and registration of space objects. From a more positive and proactive perspective, moreover, it would also be desirable to ensure that private efforts and money might be harnessed for the broader public cause of the peoples and economy of India: if properly guided by a regulatory framework, this would be the proverbial win-win situation.

I. Congratulatory message to Professor Doo-Hwan Kim on his 77th anniversary

II. Teaching space law: the beginnings

III. Teaching space law: broadening the picture

IV. Teaching space law and telecommunications law

The issue of authorisation of private space activities, the key theme of the present book, ultimately goes back to the principled political disagreements in the 50s and 60s between the two (then) superpowers in space, the United States and the Soviet Union, on the proper role of other entities than states in space activities. The Soviet Union, true to its communist ideology, was squarely against any private activities in most economically-relevant areas of society, but certainly so in an area of such strategic concern as outer space. l By contrast, the United States throughout its existence has usually presented itself as the champion of private enterprise, an approach also transpiring in its space policies.

When, following the establishment of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space first as an Ad Hoc Committee then as a more permanent one, serious discussion began on drafting a coherent legal framework for activities in outer space, this dichotomy became one of the bones of contention. Whereas the Soviet Union would insist that there should be no room for private entities within that legal framework being developed, the United States principally did not wish to close the door on them legally speaking.

At the same time, the realities at the dawn of the space age were quite clear. The - for the time incredibly advanced - levels of technology required to go into outer space, the costs and risks associated with that adventure, and the two areas originally considered the only possible beneficiaries of space activities and space technology (the military and politico-strategic domain in terms of the Cold War rivalry and the scientific domain) ensured that for some time to come realistically speaking states were the only potential actors in outer space - and to be more precise: only a handful of states were actually able and willing to take the relevant burdens upon themselves.

It is finally submitted that, while never losing sight of the benefits of a clear and coherent legal framework probably still best reflected through a treaty regime, in the arena of space activities there is considerable benefit from such mechanisms usually labelled 'soft law', whether in the context of customary internationallaw or of treaty law. Indeed, they may in a number of occasions have an indispensable function in the development of a proper international space law framework for such activities. Whether one should continue to call them 'soft law', ultimately is ofless relevance.

From the very beginning Galileo was envisaged in particular by the Commission as a public-private-partnership (PPP). On the one hand, a private concessionaire should operate the system as of full operational capability (originally scheduled for 2008, but more likely to occur not until a few years thereafter) and provide, market and sell its services – the Open Service (OS), the Commercial Service (CS), the Safety-of-Life Service (SOL), the Public Regulated Service (PRS) and a contribution to existing Search-and-Rescue services (SAR). On the other hand, a public body should monitor all such activities and the evident public interests in them – keeping them safe, secure and in mankind’s interest in general.

Such a public side to the PPP-equation was given its first embodiment with the creation of the Galileo Interim Support Structure (GISS) in 2001. The GISS was essentially a number of ESA officials being seconded under Commission funding (and control) to supervise and guide the various projects under the EU’s Fifth Framework Programme supporting the definition and development phase of Galileo. The major task of the GISS ended up to be dealing with the intricacies of what had become the GALILEI Study, a cluster of originally separate projects dealing with key Galileo issues.

A next level of institutionalisation was achieved with the establishment of the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU), a unique daughter entity of ESA and the European Commission as the two principal international entities behind Galileo.³ The GJU kick-started the next phase of Galileo by, most fundamentally, initiating and supervising the tendering process for the private Galileo operator, which was to lead to the signing of a concession contract by the end of 2005 or shortly thereafter. In addition, the GJU should prepare the introduction of Galileo more generally speaking, which included responsibility for the guidance of a number of Galileo-related research projects under the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme.

Currently, the third stage of institutionalisation has been given effect by means of the creation – at least on paper – of the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (EGSA) in 2004. With the proper start of operations of EGSA, expected by mid-2006 or shortly thereafter, the GJU will be dissolved. Contrary to EGSA, the GJU was from the beginning envisaged to be a temporary entity.

The current article tries to provide a first, rather preliminary and provisional evaluation of what EGSA will be able to do, by way of supervision of the private operation of the Galileo system – and hence also what it will likely not be able to do.

Whilst some discussion has focused on whether this 'shared competence', a specific term of art in EU law, would not better be qualified as a sui generis 'parallel competence', no notable attention has been paid to the more fundamental question to what extent the inclusion of the relevant clause in the Treaty of Lisbon has resulted in a real change as to the legislative and regulatory side of space activities undertaken in the European context.

The present paper will therefore try to analyse in somewhat more detail what the real significance of this new 'space competence,' is, might or will be. This analysis will be undertaken with reference not only to the terminology of the Treaty of Lisbon and a related clause of the preceding but aborted Constitutional Treaty, but also with reference to the previous legislative efforts of the European Union relevant to space, the few national space legislations of EU member states, and the role of ESA in this context.

Such private, semi-private and quasi-private actors use contracts as the main mechanism to protect their interests, the freedom to contract within the rule oflaw being the paramount overarching legal principle. However, because of the large measure of governmental and intergovernmental activity and involvement in the space arena and the manifold public aspects of using space those governments might perhaps be expected to subject that freedom to contract to restrictions in the context of the space sector much more than in other sectors.

Moreover, in view of the almost inherent international character of most space activities in Europe, such governmental interference with the private space sector would likely lead to many issues of potentially conflicting jurisdictions. The current contribution attempts to analyse some of these issues from the perspective ofthe national space laws that have been enunciated in European countries and their intricate relationship to the international space law regime.

These national space laws have been drafted at least partly to implement the applicable international regime vis-à-vis the private sector (notably, in this context, the Outer Space Treaty, the Liability Convention and the Registration Convention), which therefore also has to be kept in mind for the current purpose. At the same time, when enunciating their national space laws, the states that did so--Norway (1969), Sweden (1982), the United Kingdom (1986), Belgium (2005), the Netherlands (2007) and France (2008)--did not necessarily limit their scope to covering subject matter covered by the aforementioned treaties. States might well extend the scopes of their national laws to include other areas of the space arena, thus impacting contracts dealing with issues not addressed or impacted by the international space treaties.

The longstanding focus on scientific/technical aspects of space activities on the one hand, and on an international/legal context for them on the other, constitutes the key for understanding the approach of the Netherlands towards international space law, as well as to the possibility, desirability or even the need to create national space legislation as the main topic of the present book.

The Dutch Space Activities Act deals in particular with private space activities for which the Netherlands could be held internationally responsible and/or liable under the corpus juris spatialis internationalis, and the more specific issue of establishing a formal registration procedure and a national register of space objects with a view to, inter alia, dealing with the same set of space activities. Discussed in detail are the Act's 28 sections in 7 chapters.

Such major spacefaring nations within Europe as France, Germany, Italy and Spain, though all to some extent involved in discussions regarding the establishment of a proper national act dealing with, in particular, private space activities, have not yet achieved that feat. Even France, indeed, Western Europe’s foremost space power and enjoying the presence since many years of Arianespace and SpotImage, key players in the global private space arena, has only realized a national space act after the Dutch did.

From this perspective, the present paper analyzes some of the fundamental institutional parameters shaping the European presence in the space security domain, focusing on the two key players in space, which are truly European, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Union (EU). Interestingly, the starting point for both entities was that the security domain was a “no-go” area, a starting point that only over the last two decades has begun to erode. That is why, in addition the Western European Union (WEU), Europe has a certain role in this context, precisely fromthe security perspective rather than from the space perspective.

Even the European Community, as the most tightly developed “pillar” of the EU, could not be considered a supranational entity let alone a federal state. In all cases therefore, the individual member states of those organizations are still relevant as players in their own right. These states continue to be essential to determining the shape of European actions and approaches in the field of space issues, and this is even truer for the security domain.

The resulting complicated institutional landscape represents the backdrop against which, as well as a set of crucial parameters within which, European policies in the area of space are developed. This applies to the space security domain, whether one takes a broad approach as with Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and the handling of space debris, or a more limited one, focusing on international terrorism or the handling of export controls over dual-use sensitive goods.

In my view, the most comprehensive development is the increasing involvement of private enterprise. Consequently, we would need to ask ourselves where and how this development relates to, and impacts upon, the present legal framework for outer space activities as provided by the Outer Space Treaty and the remainder of the corpus juris spatiaiis internationalis. Let me try to be modest however. I will not purport to deal with this issue comprehensively here and now, only discuss one element of it which I think is of crucial importance and at the same time very illustrative from the legal point of view.

So far little analysis is available on earth observation data policy issues in Europe. What is clear, however, is that no investments in the exploitation of the data and in the systems to access earth observation data have been made which would somehow be comparable to those which have been made in the space segment. This lack of interest in the conditions of access to earth observation data, fundamental to the exploitation of earth observation data and the further growth of earth observation markets, poses a serious threat of backfiring at the European satellite earth observation activities 'upstream' .

The CEO undertook various efforts to bring earth observation data customers and earth observation service providers together through its activities in terms of user support, applications support and enabling services. Especially dealing with earth observation data policy was seen by the CEO as helping it to meet its objectives, in terms of enlarging the benefits to be derived from use and application of earth observation data. The EOPOLE project, undertaken by a team of European institutions led by the University College of London's Department of Geography, represents one such effort as it analyses the various earth observation data policy issues in Europe from a political, economical and technical, as well as from a legal point of view. In discussing such issues regarding applications and use of earth observation data gathered from space, a few parameters readily offer themselves for further scrutiny. On the one hand, the practical link of data policy issues to the space activity of earth observation itself also has an interesting legal component. On the other hand, the dominant legal issues in data policy, especially in the European context, are of a more indirect effect when it comes to the space activities proper. In introducing the EOPOLE project, the present paper thus presents an effort to shed more light on the precise relationship between the space activity of earth observation itself and the issues of data policy, and more in particular on the role which legal issues play in this regard, further to the general remarks above.