During an exchange in the Competitiveness Council dedicated to Space on Friday morning, 30 November, EU Member States long insisted that there should be clear space governance between the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Commission and the European GNSS Agency (GSA) - renamed the EU Agency for the Space Programme - in the Commission's proposal.
Opening the discussions, the Commissioner for Industry and the Internal Market, Elżbieta Bieńkowska, made no secret of her disappointment that there was no agreement on the space programme, sometimes blocked on “minor” issues, in her opinion, particularly on the name to be given to the EU Space Agency. She then insisted in particular on its proposals on governance, which do not remove any competence from ESA.
However, Germany insisted on the need to ensure the safety of ESA's expertise, particularly in the development of technologies for launchers, and to rely on its expertise, considering that the European Commission is only a "service provider". For Germany, the proposals to give the European Commission new powers, also in the field of public procurement, have no basis. In addition, Germany has rejected the extension of the EU Agency's competences for the space programme and wants to set the limits.
Concluding the discussions, Commissioner Bieńkowska explicitly asked Germany to reconsider its position, regretting that the Member State only wanted to ensure “technical” cooperation between the Commission and ESA, where “political” cooperation would be necessary with China and the United States.
A qualified majority would be secured in the Council, but the Austrian Presidency would not want to put Germany in a minority. The blockage would stem from a misinterpretation of the word "development" of European propulsion technologies, Germany seeing in it the Commission's desire to acquire research and development competences. One solution would be to replace "development" with "deployment".
The dossier at the German level has reportedly not been dealt with at the highest political level but by persons under the influence of ESA, which is allegedly the cause of the "blockage", we are told, whereas the proposal would only apply Article 189 TFEU, which provides for shared competences between ESA and the EU in the space sector.
Resignation from DG GROW. Currently, the Directorate-General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) is shaken by the resignation of Philippe Brunet, the Director responsible for the Directorate for Space Policy, Copernicus and Defence, due to disputes with his hierarchy (see other news). According to one source, these internal divisions could potentially weaken the Commission in the context of the negotiations on the space programme and play into the hands of those who support a status quo with ESA.
The geographical fair return. As a reminder, ESA does not belong to the EU institutions. It is an intergovernmental institution governed by the principle of "geographical return", i.e., it invests in each Member State, in the form of contracts awarded to its industry for the performance of space activities, an amount roughly equivalent to that country's contribution.
Proposal by the ESA Director. In this respect, Jan Wörner, the Director General of ESA, proposed last May the creation of a new European space organisation (see EUROPE 12029). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)