Brussels, 01/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - The informal meeting, the first of its kind, held after the Competitiveness Council on Monday 30 November, on the initiative of the Luxembourg Presidency, was given a warm welcome by Ministers for Industry. Nonetheless, its future is still the subject of debate.
Some member states expressed doubts about the legal validity of this meeting and considered that it needed to be included in an EU-ESA framework agreement adopted in 2004, explained one European source. This agreement is expected to be reached at the end of next year and could be renewed automatically if it is not opposed. The Commission appears to harbour some misgivings about the existence of such an informal Council, which according to the same source, does not have any decision-making powers.
The Luxembourg Presidency indicated that it would make a summary of the exchanges that took place during this first meeting and send it to the Dutch Presidency. The Netherlands does not yet have any plans for organising this kind of meeting. Nonetheless, space policy will be on the agenda of the Competitiveness Council on 26-27 May 2016.
Michel Braet, the head of cabinet to the European Space Agency (ESA), informed EUROPE that space policy is normally discussed as part of the formal Competitiveness Councils and indicated that the last meeting of this kind was in 2011 (see EUROPE 10511). This format is, however, on the margins of the discussions among the key space stakeholders, such as the ESA, Norway and Switzerland, members of the agency but not of the European Union. This meeting was organised through the unprecedented position of the Luxembourg Presidency because the latter is also co-president of the space agency (see EUROPE 11349).
Three points were discussed during this informal initial exchange: deepening cooperation between the EU and the ESA, the future of the European launchers, particularly within the context of Copernicus and Galileo, as well as independent access to European Union space and, finally, the material repercussions emanating from space data in European policies, for example, such as in the environmental domain and management of resources. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)