EASA Regulatory Map: Which Regulation Applies

Why you need a map

Ask a room of aviation professionals which regulation their daily rules live in and you will get confident, conflicting answers. The EASA system is not one rulebook; it is a trunk — the Basic Regulation — with several domain regulations branching off it, each carrying its own annexes, and each annex being one of the "Parts" everyone actually talks about. If you already know how to read a single rule, this guide supplies the other half of the skill: knowing which book to open.

The trunk: Regulation (EU) 2018/1139

Everything hangs off the Basic Regulation, adopted by the European Parliament and the Council. Its opening line is the system's mission statement:

The Basic Regulation does three structural jobs: it sets the essential requirements each domain must meet, it empowers the European Commission to adopt the detailed implementing and delegated regulations, and it establishes EASA — including the Agency's power to issue the AMC, GM and certification specifications that surround the binding rules. One caution before you go further: the Basic Regulation has its own Annex I, listing the aircraft excluded from the EASA system altogether — historic types, certain microlights and other categories left to proportionate national rules. "Annex I aircraft" therefore means outside the system; it has nothing to do with Annex I of any domain regulation.

How a domain regulation is built

Every domain regulation follows the same pattern: a short cover regulation of articles, then annexes — the Parts. The cover articles are the switchboard that routes each situation to the right annex. Watch Regulation (EU) No 1321/2014 do exactly that:

One sentence, and you know where to go: Part-M for most aircraft, Part-ML for the lighter end. This is why the cover regulation is always worth ten minutes before you dive into an annex — it tells you which annex applies to your aircraft, your organisation, your operation.

The map

Airworthiness

Alongside these sit the Agency's certification specifications — CS-25 for large aeroplanes, CS-23 for normal-category aeroplanes, CS-E for engines, CS-P for propellers, CS-ETSO for standardised parts and appliances (ETSO articles), CS-MMEL for master minimum equipment lists, and the cross-cutting AMC-20 — soft law issued under the Basic Regulation rather than annexes to a Commission regulation.

People

Maintenance engineers are the deliberate exception: their licence, Part-66, lives in the continuing airworthiness regulation above, next to the organisations that employ them.

Operations

The safety system

Infrastructure and the new domains

Which Part are you under?

Three habits that keep the map straight

Name the regulation, not just the Part. "Part-145" is unambiguous today, but amendments land on regulations, not Parts — when you track a change, you are tracking an amendment to 1321/2014. Citing "point 145.A.30 of Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 1321/2014" once in a document, then shortening afterwards, is the professional convention.

Beware same-name collisions. Annex I means Part-M in 1321/2014, Part-FCL in 1178/2011, Part-21 in 748/2012, definitions in 965/2012 — and excluded aircraft in the Basic Regulation. An annex number without its regulation is meaningless; a Part name is portable.

Let the cover articles route you. Before reading any annex, read the cover regulation's applicability articles — as Article 3 of 1321/2014 shows above, they decide which annex applies to your aircraft or operation, and getting that branch wrong invalidates everything downstream.

Where to read it yourself

Every regulation on this map is published as a free consolidated Easy Access Rules document by EASA; the citations in this guide were checked against the revisions listed in the header, and the annex structures against the corpus snapshot of 2026-07-08. Start from the trunk with how to read EASA regulations, continue to how the FAA's rulebook compares, then follow the branch you work under: continuing airworthiness, Part-145, air operations, flight crew licensing, initial airworthiness, occurrence reporting or Part-IS.