At a meeting of ministers responsible for space issues on Friday 29 May, the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, considered that the space sector, which has also been affected by the Covid-19 health crisis, should also benefit from the Next Generation EU recovery plan.
The Commissioner pointed out that the European space ecosystem has been affected by the pandemic: health restrictions, falling demand, liquidity problems and disruption of supply chains. The loss of turnover would, according to him, be 25%.
Recalling major European successes, such as Galileo (European navigation system), Copernicus (earth observation system) and EGNOS, Mr Breton stressed the importance of investing in space policy to strengthen the EU’s sovereignty and security and to stimulate the development of future technologies (5G, autonomous cars).
The Commissioner also stressed the need to improve the operational governance of Galileo (which is still in its initial phase). The European navigation system had suffered some failures last summer (see EUROPE 12409/7). Mr Breton is said to have called for an end to the quarrels observed between the Commission, the European Space Agency and the European GNSS Agency (GSA).
Responding to questions put forth by the Croatian Presidency of the EU Council (see EUROPE 12495/9), the Commissioner detailed his project for the Copernicus programme: to create a digital twin earth with the help of the massive amounts of data generated by the programme and artificial intelligence.
In conclusion, the Commissioner would have asked the ministers present to convince their counterparts in Finance not to forget the space sector in the negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework. The space policy budget had been initiated during the negotiations ahead of Covid-19 (see EUROPE 12409/8).
During the interventions, the national delegations all recognised the importance of the space sector in the recovery to accompany the transition towards a greener, digital and resilient European economy. Several ministers supported better coordination between the different European institutions. The issue of labour skills was also highlighted in order to make the best use of spatial data. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)