United Space in Europe, United Europe in Space
Tweet In these days the European Commission is finalizing the regulations for the next Multiannual Financial Framework. This comes at a very important time for the EU, ESA, their respective Member States and the European space sector as a whole. Space is a critical sector, enabling public policies and European engagement worldwide and creates new business opportunities. The capacity to use and access space is an indispensable element for Europe to tackle global challenges, such as climate change, technology revolutions, shifts in geopolitical power or humanitarian crises, and to support economic growth, safety and security, quality of life and sustainable development. Europe is already a very important space power, thanks to constant public sector investments and the excellence of large system integrators, SMEs, research and technical centres as well as academia. We are talking about a Europe where EU is part of Europe, ESA is part of Europe, and our respective Member States are part of Europe. However, in recent years many new actors worldwide, new space faring nations and private companies have entered the space sector, resulting in increased competition on the global scene. In order for Europe not to lose out to this fierce competition, we need a common response of all European space actors. No single organisation or institution in Europe can face the current challenges or fully grasp all emerging opportunities alone. We need a strong, coordinated, united European space sector where all these actors work together efficiently. How can we define an efficient Space Policy for the European space sector and a coherent implementation framework to incarnate such policy? The first step is to avoid narrowing the analysis on just the EU space policy, or the ESA space policy, or the space policy of their respective Member States at national level. EU, ESA and […]