According to a parliamentary source consulted on Thursday 3 November, the European Parliament will be moving towards an own-initiative report on the space strategy for Europe recently presented by the European Commission.
The Parliament's industry, research and energy committee (ITRE) is very likely to be the committee underpinning this initiative. The security and defence committee’s (SEDE) opinion will certainly be sought regarding the encrypted GovSatCom satellite communication project (see EUROPE 11655) and the budgets committee (BUDG) will also be asked to take part in the debate on the future research and development framework programme.
If this format is retained, it will be good news for the space sector and the member states that are particularly involved in this policy, such as France. One sector source informed EUROPE that this is what MEPs are effectively expecting and that they can now take full advantage of the dynamic initiated by the Commission to better highlight the transversal nature of a space policy by involving the greatest number of parliamentary committees – one of the concerns being that MEPs opt for resolutions by political group.
The space industry is particularly active. In a column published on the Euractiv website on Wednesday 2 November, the head of Eurospace, Jean-Loïc Galle, urged the European Parliament to "take the baton and keep elaborating this new narrative for tomorrow’s EU space policy".
On 26 October, the Commission presented the first EU Space strategy, which was unanimously welcomed by the space sector (see EUROPE 11657). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)