Third-party liability insurance at European level
Regulation (EC) No 785/2004 sets the insurance requirements for air carriers and aircraft operators in the Union. The examination question is not the amount: it is whether your drone even falls within its scope.
Key points
- Article 2(2)(b) excludes from the scope of the regulation model aircraft with an MTOM of less than 20 kg. It targets model aircraft, not every unmanned aircraft below that threshold: whether a given drone is one is a legal characterisation the text does not settle, and the real extent of the exclusion in the ‘open’ category depends on it.
- That 20 kg threshold belongs to no class C0 to C4 and matches neither the 25 kg of the ‘open’ category nor the 250 g of registration: it is a threshold specific to aviation insurance law.
- The European exclusion is not a prohibition on States: several impose insurance through their national law, others do not. It is one of the heaviest divergences between Member States, and it is revised in the national module.
- Regulation 2019/947 itself refers to that national level: Article 14(2)(d) asks for an insurance policy number at registration where Union OR national law requires it. Hence a form that asks for it in one State and not in another, without either of them departing from the regulation.
- For an aircraft to which Regulation 785/2004 applies and whose maximum take-off mass is less than 500 kg, the minimum insurance cover in respect of third parties is 0.75 million SDRs (Art. 7(1)): special drawing rights, as defined by the International Monetary Fund.
- The 250 000 SDRs belong to an entirely different regime: it is the minimum cover per PASSENGER under Article 6(1). An unmanned aircraft carries no passengers; only third-party cover concerns it.
- Article 4(1) requires the cover to include acts of war, terrorism, hijacking, acts of sabotage, unlawful seizure of aircraft and civil commotion: precisely the risks that policies tend spontaneously to exclude.
The trap. Confusing the 20 kg of insurance with the 25 kg of the ‘open’ category leads to the wrong conclusion that the whole ‘open’ category is outside the scope of Regulation 785/2004. It is outside it only through the exclusion of model aircraft under 20 kg: two close figures, two different regimes.
Source
Regulation (EC) No 785/2004 (CELEX 02004R0785, consolidated on 30/07/2020), art. 2, paragraph 2, point b), art. 3, point e), art. 4, paragraph 1, art. 6, paragraph 1, and art. 7, paragraph 1; Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 (CELEX 02019R0947, consolidated on 01/05/2025), art. 14, paragraph 2, point d)