Judging by the new regulation introducing the space programme presented on Wednesday 6 June, the European Commission would like to strengthen the role of the European GNSS Agency (GSA), particularly in the security domain and rename it as the “EU Agency for the Space Programme”.
Elzbieta Bienkowska, the Commissioner for Industry and the Internal Market stated that “What we are proposing here – and I want to insist here – it is evolution not revolution”. She also pointed out that the GSA would have an expanded remit, particularly for covering new programmes such as the GovSatCom (encrypted governmental communication) programme and the Space Situation Awareness (SSA) programme. The agency will also have responsibility for the security accreditation of all space programmes. During the press conference, the Commissioner hammered home the fact that “There is definitely no transfer of competence from ESA to GSA” (European Space Agency, Ed).
The agency will therefore not see its budget increase. The change of name does not correspond in any way either to a recasting of the agency but simply as a means of bringing it up to speed with the fact that there is now a single space programme.
The Commission will therefore continue to coordinate and supervise the different elements in the space programme and define its objectives and long-term developments. The ESA will continue to develop Copernicus, Galileo and Egnos and, at a more general level, will be in charge of all research activities
Conditionalities
On the subject of governance, the regulation introduces the conditionalities that ensure that the ESA introduces internal procedures for protecting the EU's interests and avoids undermining the space programme (art. 31, line 3). According to one source, the objective in this regard is to prevent member states (such as the United Kingdom) in the ESA, which is an intergovernmental institution outside the EU, from being blocked from the space programmes financed by the European Union.
New European Space
The regulation continues with a desire to provide strong support to innovative start-ups and SMEs in effort to compete with the expansion of the private sector in the space domain, particularly in the US. Therefore, the programme intends to support the scaling up of SMEs and business space hubs at regional and national levels, particularly between the space and digital sectors (art. 6). To this end, the Commission intends to create an equity instrument through the InvestEU programme (see other article) and draw on the Horizon Europe programme.
European preference
The European Commission has confirmed its wish to support European launchers, particularly Ariane 6 and Vega C, by setting into stone the principle of aggregated institutional orders in order to provide visibility and guarantee predictability in the European space sector (mainly Arianespace). The objective is to combine orders for the European space programmes Galileo and Copernicus throughout the whole of the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework. In this regard, the regulation provides for the very first time, a specially dedicated article on access to space (art. 5) in order to ensure the EU's independence in this domain.
Budget
As we previously reported in our publication (see EUROPE 12034), Galileo and Egnos are expected to receive €9.7 billion and Copernicus €5.8 billion in constant prices. €500 million is expected to go towards the development of GovSatCom and the SSA. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)