The European Parliament and the Council made a first round table discussion of their respective positions on the regulation on the post-2020 space programme at an inter-institutional meeting held on the margins of the Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg on Monday evening, 14 January.
The first exchanges took place in a climate of good understanding. The co-legislators have expressed their willingness to move quickly and to find an interinstitutional agreement before the European elections. To do this, they said they were willing to be flexible. The date for the next inter-institutional meeting has not yet been set, but should be around mid-February.
Among the main policy issues to be negotiated are the issue of access to space (the Parliament being in favour of a strong aggregation of institutional orders to strengthen the European launcher sector - see EUROPE 12159) and the issue of governance between the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Commission, and the future EU Agency for the Space Programme, which will replace the current European GNSS Agency (GSA) (see EUROPE 12035).
Governance had been the major stumbling block between Member States in the Council, with Germany being particularly committed to maximising the sanctuary of the prerogatives of ESA (see EUROPE 12158), an intergovernmental organisation governed by the principle of "geographical fair return", i.e. States receive contracts for their national industries for which the amount corresponds approximately to that of their contributions. On the latter point, the Commission reportedly indicated that it did not support the Parliament's position, which proposes a strengthening of the tasks of the EU Agency, for budgetary and control reasons. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)