European Network of U-space Stakeholders Meeting in Brussels on 9 November 2026

European Network of U-space Stakeholders met in Luxembourg on 10 June 2026. Hosted by Aviation Learning Centre, EUROCONTROL (ALC), the meeting was attended by around 90 people and more then 30 online participants representing ANSPs, regulatory bodies, UTM technology providers, drone operators, military representatives and stakeholders to discuss U-space related topics. 

Hendrik Dermont, Head of EUROCONTROL ALC highlighted ALC's portfolio of training and workshops related to the UAS, U-space and C-UAS domains.  This is in line with the EUROCONTROL's Trajectory 2030 strategy, released in Nov 2025.

Laura Könner, Director, Directorate of Civil Aviation (DAC) highlighted that Luxembourg is advancing digital improvements, training initiatives and airspace optimisations within its airspace, building a seamless ecosystem for UAS operations in close cooperation with stakeholders. In a fast-evolving industry, however, key technological and regulatory bottlenecks remain across the community.

She identified four key challenges in implementing U-space in Luxemburg:

• Significant fragmentation, which creates the wider buffer zones required for authorised flights
• E-conspicuity requirements, a necessary cost for building situational awareness
• Prolonged risk assessments, which limit airspace usage and dynamic operations
• Multi-source data sharing, drawing on legacy surveillance and varied sources to support a unified national situational awareness picture.

Moderated by Stephane Vaubourg from EASA, the first panel focused on the benefits of U-space and how it enables scalable, seamless operations. The panel highlighted that U-space provides UAS operators the data they need to fly safely while meeting quality and performance standards, supported by mitigation practices recognised by the competent authority. U-space aims to improve efficiency and safety of drone operations to make them scalable.

U-space was further highlighted as easing the path to operational approval, supporting operators in meeting performance requirements and reducing the overall risk level of their operations. By standardising how air and ground risk are handled, U-space supports integration across European airspace and smoother cross-border operations. These benefits run in both directions, reducing the review effort for competent authorities and making approvals faster and more efficient.

As part of the meeting, the stakeholder community took part in a consultation hosted by DG MOVE and Ernst & Young consulting partners, assessing the implementation and continued relevance of Drone Strategy 2.0. While industry and the wider community continue to invest in research and build out the ecosystem, the discussion highlighted that a number of challenges still remain to be addressed, from enabling BVLOS operations to building a scalable, interoperable market and ensuring safe traffic management alongside wider considerations such as public acceptance.

European industry needs a faster route to U-space deployment to enable UAS operations, where demand is already clear and immediate. To address this, EASA presented the concept of a Modular U-space, designed to simplify deployment and allow operations to launch gradually through a phased approach that moves progressively from low-level drone operations toward more complex, higher-volume operations.

This approach enables systematic experimentation and lays the foundation for scalable BVLOS operations, while gathering valuable data and insights along the way. Developed with support from the national authorities, consultations are now underway.

Geopolitical developments have driven strong demand for closer civil-military cooperation. The last panel of the day explored the possibility of the military acting as a USSP within U-space. The shift in UAS capabilities has changed how Europe views military involvement, with industry increasingly developing dual-use systems that blur the line between civilian and military operations. In this context, a clear connection between the military and USSPs can only help integrate military and civilian drone flights.

Moderated by Stephen O-Sullivan from EDA, the second panel identified two U-space services as especially valuable for defence:

• Flight authorisation, which lets the military separate known operators from unknown ones
• Traffic information, which shows where cooperative traffic is flying.

These services are only part of the picture. U-space is not a detection system, as it covers cooperative traffic only, leaving non-cooperative threats to be handled through separate detection means. Integrating U-space alongside state and military operators can provide strategic benefit.  Speed with which integration can take place will depend on willingness of States to drive the necessary work on data sharing and governance forward.

To close the meeting, European Defence Agency drew attention to the importance of experimental test centres as a core enabler of data-driven development, where trial grounds make proper testing possible. The Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB) and its civil counterpart (CTEB) aim to fill this gap.

Athanasios Lempesis from EDA highlighted DTEB as a community of test centres and experts across multiple domains, supported by a broad database of organisations and capabilities. Its civil counterpart, CTEB, builds on this as a joint EDA–DG MOVE initiative under the EU Drone Strategy 2.0, set up to address the fragmented availability of drone testing facilities and to give civil users a single point of access, with dual-use at the centre. Following a successful pilot, it is now up and running and free to register, with the longer-term aim of growing into a network of civil and defence test centres.

The meeting in Luxembourg closed with a Q&A and polling session that helped identify the network's next topics and gauge how stakeholders view the way our meetings are run. For our upcoming meeting we had identified three key topics which are Acceleration of implementation, Regulations simplification and ARA. The next meeting is set for November this year.