Space is the new ‘Wild West.’ The EU is dying to step in and regulate.

According to documents seen by POLITICO, the bloc’s diplomats have been briefed on plans to create an EU Space Label that will be used to designate companies that play by the new rules on sustainability and security, much in the same way that the bloc uses eco-labels to certify washing machines or televisions.

If space companies want to do business with the bloc, they’ll have to abide by the rules, said Niklas Nienaß, an MEP with the German Greens who has long pushed the Commission to set rules for space, adding the draft was shaping up to create “one single market in space.”

The EU Space Law will set standards to curb light pollution caused by growing satellite constellations and limit greenhouse gas emissions and pollution caused by rocket launches.

There will also be an effort to tackle the growing amount of debris in space, while making sure that space junk hurtling back to Earth is handled safely.

“In over 60 years of space activity, we have more than 60,000 objects that need to be tracked in space, and over 1 million [pieces of] small debris,” said Grudler. “If we do nothing, we will no longer be able to launch satellites because space will be too cluttered.”

All this is part of plans to develop rules of the road to manage space traffic given that the number of satellites in low Earth orbit — the increasingly busy band critical for telecommunications and observation spacecraft — has grown sharply over recent years.