International and national space law and policy developments

Governments, international bodies, companies and institutions are all influenced by international as well as national space law, institutional and policy developments, and this is an ever more complicated fashion. Considerable interdisciplinary understanding of developments with widely varying international impact is necessary to answer the questions facing such stake-holders in order that they may chart their own course safely and soundly through those rapid and multi-faceted developments. How, for example, are in any particular field of space activities or applications law and regulation intertwined with institutional and policy developments? What are the prospects for certain future developments? How to tackle them best? What role do national legislation, regulation and policies have in determining the parameters of the international legal and policy framework? Or vice versa, what impact does the latter have on the former?

Amongst a huge number of projects and studies all involving somehow questions of developments in international space law and policy, a considerable set of such projects and studies very much targeted in such developments testifies to the ability of Black Holes to help stakeholders answer the relevant questions.

A series of Practitioners’ Fora organized by Frans von der Dunk at ESA Headquarters in Paris in the context of the European Centre for Space Law proved the breadth of the subjects forming ongoing international and national space law developments, as further illustrated by the intensive exchange of information and opinion between industry, the public sector and academia which came about at those Fora.

The development of national space laws and policies in the wider framework of international law, policy and politics was equally addressed by a number of projects part of Black Holes’ expertise.