Anticipated cuts in the EU's next space budget were mentioned with anxiety by many actors present at the 2020 European Space Policy Conference in Brussels on Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 January.
Among them was the European Space Agency, which made no secret of its deep concern about the latest proposals of the Finnish Presidency of the EU Council (see EUROPE 12383/11), which envisage reducing the space policy budget to €12.7 billion (compared to €14.4 billion in constant prices proposed by the European Commission).
"We would like also to see that the budget for the MFF is increased back to 16 billion euros (current prices) or even more", said ESA Director General Jan Wörner, speaking to a dozen European journalists, reiterating that the European Union contribution was 23% of the ESA budget (70% coming from Member States, 4% from industry and 3% from Eumetsat, the European organisation for the operation of meteorological satellites).
“Of course it would have an impact!” He replied to EUROPE, adding: "and one should not think, 'Ah! ESA got more money, so we can reduce the funds for the European Union’''. "This would be a totally wrong understanding, especially because the Member States in ESA gave a lot of money for the future development of Galileo and Copernicus", he hammered home.
It is true that, following the Seville Ministerial Council of the EU, ESA received more from its 22 Member States than it had requested, in particular for Copernicus, to obtain a budget of €14.4 billion over the next five years (see EUROPE 12379/2).
Josef Aschbacher, Director of Earth Observation Programmes at ESA, interviewed by EUROPE, went further. "We will have a huge problem - we will lose our global leadership in earth observation", he diagnosed, adding that the Commission's proposals already fell short of ESA's expectations.
On the same page was Paul Verhoef, Director of Navigation at ESA and therefore responsible for the development of Galileo, who pointed out that the European Navigation programme depended entirely on EU funding.
For him, the budget cuts planned during Finland's Presidency could have an impact on the second generation of satellites in the Galileo constellation, which aims to increase the accuracy of the constellation to around ten centimetres (instead of around one metre today). "Cuts equivalent to 10% are serious," he repeated, fearing that he would not have to postpone their development, but to rethink their very design.
Thierry Breton on the manoeuvre
On Wednesday 22 January, in front of a packed room of several hundred space stakeholders, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton assured that he would do his utmost to maintain the Commission's proposal and, to do so, he made sure that he and Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn were well aligned with the same objectives to follow the negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework.
To which Marian-Jean Marinescu (EPP, Romania), Chair of the European Parliament's Sky & Space Intergroup, replied that he would have to talk directly with the prime ministers and presidents of the recalcitrant Member States, explicitly citing the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland "and even Mr Macron" to change the situation.
The launcher industry also worried. For the CEO of the Ariane Group, André-Hubert Roussel, in discussions with EUROPE, budget cuts threaten nothing less than the European Union's autonomy of access to space, because fewer institutional orders mean fewer launches, while direct competitors, such as SpaceX, are massively supported by public orders. In his view, the Union must secure a sufficient budget and, in the long term, it must even equip itself with a Buy European Act, following the example of what is being done on the other side of the Atlantic. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)