The European Union Aviation Safety Agency

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency, known as EASA, is the aviation safety authority of the European Union. It drafts the common rules on airworthiness, maintenance, operations and licensing, and it certifies aircraft types and design organizations for the states inside the system.

Those rules apply in the union's member states and in a small number of associated states that have joined the system by agreement. The national authority remains the body that holds the register and issues the certificate of registration, and EASA supplies the common rule that authority applies.

For an aircraft owner, an EASA state register means the aircraft is certified and maintained under the common European rules rather than under a purely national code, which matters most when an aircraft is moved between registers. It says nothing about the register's own charges, its ownership eligibility conditions or how quickly it works.