European Commission agrees to technical requirements for drones

The European Commission has approved technical requirements for new drones. According to the Commission, these will ultimately increase the safety of drone use. More rules will follow and the entire framework should apply in the EU by 2020.

EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc says the current approval is essential for the further development of the European drone sector. The Commission has agreed to a first building block to arrive at a comprehensive set of rules, which, according to Bulc, will ensure that drone use in Europe becomes safer.

According to Bulc, the adopted rules strike a balance between obligations for drone manufacturers and drone pilots, respecting privacy, the environment, limiting noise pollution and safety. New drones must, among other things, be individually identifiable so that authorities can track a particular drone if necessary.

Earlier, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued non-binding guidelines for safe operation of small drones weighing up to 25 kilograms. The European Parliament approved it in June last year. The Commission has now officially decided on the technical requirements, but will in the near future consider rules for the use of the drones, such as the certification requirements and minimum training requirements for drone pilots for each drone type. All new rules should come into effect in 2020 for newly sold drones.

For example, the current technical requirements approved by the Commission include a mandatory identification number, so that it can be determined remotely where a specific drone is located and who owns it. It also concerns restrictions on the flight height, rules about the situation that the connection to the drone is lost and rules about geofencing.

Drones are ultimately classified into five different maximum weight classes: 250 grams, 900 grams, 4 kilograms, and two 25-kilogram classes. In most classes, the drones are not allowed to fly higher than 120 meters and geofencing is mandatory. The latter does not apply to drones up to 250 grams. Drones of the two lightest weight classes may not go further than 50 meters from the pilot; such limitation does not apply to heavier drones.