JEDA and EASA collaborate “to develop safe and secure UAS market in the EU”

The President of the Joint European Drone Associations (JEDA), Julie Garland, and Executive Director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Florian Guillermet have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) to collaborate on uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) operations to foster the development of a safe and secure UAS market in the EASA Member States.

“Since the applicability date in 2020 of Regulation (EU) 2019/947, numerous UAS operations have been conducted across both open and specific categories,” JEDA said in a LinkedIn post. “However, a comprehensive overview detailing the number and types of UAS operations conducted, accumulated flight hours, and failures is missing. Moreover, the development of safety culture in the EU drone industry needs to be encouraged.”

JEDA includes national associations from more than 20 European states and has over 3000 members involved as operators, remote pilots, manufacturers, and service providers. Data provided by JEDA will support EASA in effectively evaluating the efficacy and proportionality of the EU UAS regulation. 

Under the MoC, JEDA will support EASA in developing an uncrewed aircraft function to facilitate compiling, collecting, and sending data in case of accidents and incidents.

“Collecting data in a structured way is instrumental for assessing the effectiveness of the European drone regulation,” Guillermet said. “We need to work together to build a safe drone market by ensuring a strong safety culture is underpinning this young industry as it grows and matures.”

“We are delighted to be joining forces with EASA to work on this common topic that is central to the future development of the European drone ecosystem,” Garland said. “Through this cooperation, we will pool our expertise to help EASA assess the effectiveness and proportionality of the EU UAS regulation and establish exposure data for safety performance assessment in Europe concerning the UAS domain and to build and foster a just culture with drone operators.”