More than a dozen EU member states have written their own national space laws. On June 25, 2025, the European Commission moved to harmonize that patchwork with the EU Space Act — one regulatory framework covering licensing, debris mitigation, and spectrum coordination across all 27 member states. Rapporteur Elena Donazzan published her draft report on March 3, 2026, with amendments addressing mutual recognition of launch authorizations and revised sustainability requirements. A Council compromise text followed on March 30. Into that conversation steps Tanja Masson-Zwaan, with four decades of space law behind her.
Masson-Zwaan is Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University, established in 1985. Its Adv. LL.M. program in Air and Space Law has run since 2000. She co-authored Introduction to Space Law (Kluwer), used as a graduate-level text in space law programs worldwide. Beyond Leiden, she holds two of the field’s most senior international roles: President Emerita of the International Institute of Space Law and former Vice President of the International Astronautical Federation.
Her credentials extend beyond academia. The Dutch government appointed her an arbitrator for space-related disputes at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. She co-founded the Hague International Space Resources Governance Working Group, which developed building blocks for a framework to govern the extraction of resources from celestial bodies. She directs the international space law module at LUISS University in Rome, and in late 2024 she added an adjunct professorship at Wuhan University in China. In 2020, the Dutch government decorated her as an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau.
The EU Space Act addresses a structural question, not a vacuum. International space law, anchored by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and four subsequent UN agreements, assigns responsibility to states for the activities of their nationals — but leaves the design of national licensing regimes to each state. EU members have answered that responsibility in different ways. Some have enacted dedicated national space legislation; others authorize and supervise commercial activities directly under their Outer Space Treaty obligations. Both approaches satisfy the same state duty. For operators like Sateliot’s Jaume Sanpera, who plans a 250-satellite constellation spanning European jurisdictions, the question of harmonization is more than academic.
At the inaugural Amsterdam Space Symposium in March 2026, Masson-Zwaan put the question plainly: does Europe need the EU Space Act?
At SmallSat Europe, she carries that question to a panel titled “The EU Space Law: Harmonizing Rules or a Competitive Moat.” She joins Sateliot CEO Jaume Sanpera, space law partners Drew Svor of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton and Dr. Ingo Baumann of BHO Legal, Aldoria Belgium CEO Christine Leurquin, and Alberto Rueda Carazo of the European Space Policy Institute. The panel’s framing leaves the question open: do unified rules strengthen the European space sector, or insulate it from global competition?
She helped write the textbook. At SmallSat Europe, the question on her panel is whether unified EU rules strengthen the European space sector or insulate it from the global market.
