ASTM and JEDA Sign MoU to Strengthen Global Drone Standards Alignment

At XPONENTIAL Europe in Düsseldorf, the Joint European Drone Associations (JEDA) and ASTM International formalized a new partnership aimed at strengthening global coordination around drone standards.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed during the event’s Standards Forum, establishes a framework to improve awareness, participation, and alignment in international voluntary consensus standards—an increasingly critical layer as drone operations scale across Europe and beyond.

At its core, the agreement reflects a growing reality: the future of uncrewed aviation will be shaped less by individual technologies and more by shared frameworks that enable them to operate safely and consistently across borders.

Julie Garland, President of JEDA, emphasized the importance of connecting European stakeholders more directly into global standards development. As regulatory frameworks such as U-space continue to evolve, she noted that stronger alignment between industry, standards bodies, and regulators will be essential to reduce fragmentation and improve interoperability.

The MoU is designed to operationalize that alignment. Key areas of collaboration include expanding access to ASTM standards, increasing participation from European stakeholders in technical committees, and supporting training and education initiatives. It also aims to create a more direct feedback loop between real-world operations and the standards that underpin them—an area that has historically lagged as deployments move faster than governance structures.

From ASTM’s perspective, the partnership reinforces the role of consensus-based standards as infrastructure for emerging aviation systems. Jeff Grove, ASTM’s Vice President of Global Policy, Cooperation and Communication, framed the agreement as part of a broader effort to ensure innovation can scale responsibly across jurisdictions.

The timing is notable. Europe is entering a new phase of drone integration, with U-space implementation accelerating and cross-border operations becoming more viable. At the same time, global markets are increasingly interconnected, raising the stakes for harmonized technical and operational frameworks.

Organizations like JEDA—representing national drone associations across Europe—play a critical role in translating regional needs into global standards discussions. ASTM, through Committee F38 on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, provides one of the primary venues where those discussions are formalized into technical guidance and standards used worldwide.

The partnership signals a shift toward more structured, cross-regional collaboration—one where standards are not just developed in isolation, but co-shaped by the stakeholders responsible for deploying and regulating these systems in the real world.

As drone and advanced air mobility ecosystems continue to mature, this type of alignment may prove just as important as the technologies themselves.