WASHINGTON — The European Union is following the United States’ lead to incorporate unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, into civilian life.
Last September, the European Commission, which is the executive body of the European Union, announced it was working on plans to open civil airspace to unmanned drones by 2016. The move mirrored President Barack Obama’s signing of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act in February to open U.S. airspace to drones by 2015.
The commission’s working paper, “Towards a European Strategy for the Development of Civil Applications of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems,” claimed there were some 400 civilian drone applications in development across the European Union. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration has approved 327 active permits, which are among the 1,500 total permits that have been issued since 2007, according to FAA spokesman Les Dorr.
More than 130 organizations, including both private firms and government bodies, have been given permission to fly drones in the United Kingdom alone, according to the U.K.’s airspace regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority. The United Kingdom generally has a greater diversity of applicants than the United States, including police forces, fire departments and a marketing company that is using a drone to create promotional videos for golf courses.
The United States, meanwhile, is giving permits mainly to police departments, universities and other government agencies, according to the FAA. This could be due to the fact that the FAA has slightly more restrictions than the CAA, such as the need in the United States to have a qualified pilot flying the vehicle, which is not required in the United Kingdom.
Another difference is that much of the recent discussion about drones in Europe has centered on farming. Agricultural inspectors are interested in using drones to ensure farmers aren’t cheating on subsidies or violating rules within the Common Agricultural Policy, established by the European Union to ensure a fair standard of living for farmers and provide a stable, affordable food supply for consumers.
Farm subsidies cost taxpayers billions of euros each year, BBC News reports. Officials say the vehicles will serve as a cheaper and more efficient way to prevent fraud and waste.
These drones are currently being tested in vineyards in the south of France to ensure that the process of “grubbing up,” which involves pulling the vines up by the roots and replacing them with other agricultural groups, is done legally and economically.
Winegrowers receive as much as 10,000 euros, or $13,000, per hectare (about two acres) in subsidies to dig up these uncompetitive vines in order to prevent “wine lakes,” caused by overproduction, according to BBC News.
Drones are also being tested in Italy and are already used in Spain’s Catalonia region to inspect small landholdings growing mixed crops typical of the Mediterranean region.
Although the United States and the European Union may be using drones in different ways, both face similar concerns from civil liberty advocates.
Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union in the United States have voiced concerns about the privacy implications of drones. The organization wrote in a statement, “We don’t want to wonder, every time we step out our front door, whether some eye in the sky is watching our every move.”
Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, wrote in a December 2011 report, “These machines are disquieting. Virtually any robot can engender a certain amount of discomfort, let alone one associated in the mind of the average American with spy operations or targeted killing. If you will pardon the inevitable reference to 1984, George Orwell specifically describes small flying devices that roam neighborhoods and peer into windows.”
In Europe, critics are afraid that there isn’t enough public discussion.
“We could accept the argument that there are lots of things they can be useful for, but…the questions about what is acceptable and how people feel about drones hovering over their farmland or their demonstration—these debates are not taking place,” said Ben Hayes of the campaign group Statewatch, a nonprofit organization that monitors civil liberties in the European Union.
