Marco Ferrazzani is the Legal Counsel and Head Department of the European Space Agency.

He is a licensed lawyer working since 1988 for ESA. In his position he has covered the legal and policy issues of several ESA’s programmes, advising the organisation and its Member States on the legal and institutional solutions for carrying out space programmes.

He participated in several multilateral discussions and drafted proposals for decisions of Member States to commit space programmes in Europe and in co-operation with other space agencies, international organisations and Governments or institutions of non-member States. He currently provides the full range of legal competences to the Agency.

He represented ESA at several international conferences and at the Legal Sub-Committee of UNCOPUOS. He is regularly invited as guest lecturer in various University courses on international law of space activities and on the same areas of interest, has also published numerous papers at conferences and articles in law and policy journals.

He holds a law degree cum laude from the University of Naples (Italy), specialising in international and European law, obtained with a dissertation, which gained the University prize for the best doctoral thesis on international and comparative law. Thereafter, he attended postgraduate law studies at Georgetown and Harvard Law Schools, as well as at Salzburg University, with focus on international relations and comparative law.