During the 10th annual conference on European space policy on Tuesday 23 January, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Industry, Elżbieta Bieńkowska, made a number of declarations. These particularly involved the Galileo and Copernicus European space programmes and the announcement of an “enhanced service" before 2020 for the former and a service for facilitating access to data for the latter.
Bieńkowska therefore explained that she wanted to strengthen the use of data produced by the European terrestrial observation programme, Copernicus, by facilitating data access and announcing the launch next May of the ‘Data and Information Access Service’ (DIAS).
The Commissioner explained to the packed room that, “This is a revolutionary approach that will allow several consortiums to set up platforms under industry's leadership in an effort to make access to Copernicus data easier".
With regard to the European geo-localisation programme, Galileo, which is supposed to be able to compete with the US GPS system, the Commissioner indicated that she wanted to launch an “enhanced service" for the programme in Europe as a means of providing very accurate reception, before the programme is entirely operational in 2020. The Commissioner explained that the search and rescue services would benefit from this enhanced service, which should be able to keep users informed and who use these services to find out about the progress made in rescue operations.
Commissioner Bieńkowska explained that in this regard, the problem of atomic clocks in the Galileo programme had been resolved, which effectively ends the successive concerns since the announcement at of the beginning of unexplained short-circuits in certain atomic clocks in the European space programme, shortly after the launch of initial services (see EUROPE 11706, 11722).
Security and defence. Bieńkowska once again made a robust appeal for a security/defence chapter in the space programme and said that space was an “enabler" in these domains. She insisted that in this connection, the sector should request European Defence Funds. The Commissioner therefore wants to make progress with the space surveillance and tracking programme and the "GovSatCom" programme.
Doubling space budget. During a press conference, the Vice President for the Energy Union, Maroš Šefčovič, did not attempt to conceal his goals for the next multi-annual financial framework and said that he wanted to “double" the European budget for space policy, which currently stands at €12 billion for the 2014-20 period. This budget would be even higher than the €20 billion goal sought by the industry itself (see EUROPE 11882). Ms Bienkowska would like the next budget to be on a par with its goals and allow for the continuity of the current programmes and their development in covering new fields of activity, particularly in the climate change follow-up field (in line with COP 21) and security and defence.
Role of private sector to be strengthened in the future. The emergence of the overseas private sector in the space domain is characterised by the European Commission strategy. On this basis, the Commissioner appealed for adaptation of the space sector in Europe to “this new situation”. In her view, the private and public sectors should work together. The InnoFin Space Equity Pilot (ISEP), the European financing mechanism for innovation for enterprise, should be listened to. The Commissioner also wants to extend joint technological initiatives with the industry in this area on the model of the pilot initiative put forward by the European Parliament (see EUROPE 11911).
Appeal for European launchers to be given preference. On the lines of the Competitiveness Council conclusions ratifying a preference for European launchers (see EUROPE 11918), Bieńkowska exclaimed that she was in favour of developing and updating the strategies supporting European launchers because, “There can be no space policy without autonomous access to space”. In her view, it is necessary to have “concerted" action between the European Union, the European Space Agency (ESA) and industry. She explained that the European Commission intended to play its role by incorporating its orders for European space programme launchers and is ready to “formalise" this approach. The Commissioner would like to see this approach adopted by the member states.
Launch of prize for promoting ‘low-cost' launchers. Faced with spectacular progress in the private sector and overseas reusable launcher technologies, the Commissioner announced the opening of a European Innovation Council Horizon 2020 prize for supporting the development of low-cost launchers. Commissioner Bieńkowska, however, thinks that this initiative is not sufficient and has called for a significant increase in cooperation between the EU, ESA and member states in this domain. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)