The Member States of the European Union seem to be gradually abandoning the desire to guarantee an "independent” access to space in the European Union and are now more in favour of an "autonomous” access, according to a recent and non final version of the EU Council conclusions dedicated to the space sector, consulted by EUROPE on Thursday 9 May.
In a version dated 6 May of the EU Council conclusions entitled 'Space as enabler’, Member States recognise “that it is necessary for Europe to maintain a secure, autonomous, reliable, cost-effective and affordable access to space, thus contributing to an innovative and competitive European Space sector, and reinforcing the global role of Europe”. However, until a version dated 25 April, the adjective "independent" appeared alongside the term "autonomous".
Its deletion is said to have received the support of most national delegations except for France and Belgium, who fought to maintain the term "independent". One source explains that the choice of this deletion is not insignificant, it is a question of confirming the strategic nature of the space sector and launchers for Europe beyond economic logic.
“Autonomy is the 'theoretical' ability to access space alone, while independence goes further and means that we are capable and we do not rely on anyone to access space," according to the same source. "Without independent access to space, Europe cannot really claim to be a space power".
In addition, Member States have further deleted the notion of a "commercially competitive" space industry in favour of an "‘open to other sectors" space industry. "This shows a relatively low sensitivity to the specificities of the industrial sector compared to American, Chinese, Russian and other competitors," says our source, pointing to the risk of a level of domestic public procurement that is too low to allow the space sector to be competitive on an international level. "If the industry can no longer export, it will not do much good for the European space sector to be 'open to other sectors', because then there will not be much left of it...”, concludes our source.
European preference, without explicitly mentioning its name, is an approach advocated by the European Commission since the publication of its strategy in October 2016, with the aim of aggregating institutional orders to give visibility and safety to the space launch sector (see EUROPE 11655/9). The Commission's role, however, may have seemed ambiguous, as shown with key American space sector players, sending sometimes conflicting signals to European industry (see EUROPE 12100/17).
The conclusions were discussed again in a working group in the EU Council on Wednesday 8 May. The outcome of the discussions was not yet known to us at the time of this writing. These conclusions are expected to be adopted by the EU Council next 28 May. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)