Due to a lack of time, the German EU Council Presidency did not present a new compromise on Article 25 of the EU Space Programme Regulation on the protection of the EU’s essential interests to the national delegations at the EU Council Working Party on Space on Tuesday 8 September.
Member States had until Friday 4 September to submit their comments. At the working party meeting, the German Presidency gave assurances that it was on track to present a new compromise at the Working Party on Space meeting on 29 September.
The German Presidency gave some indication of the content of the future compromise. It would thus intend to preserve the title of Article 25 which it had proposed in its previous compromise, namely ‘Conditions for the preservation of the security, integrity and resilience of operational systems of the European Union’ (see EUROPE 12548/8), and not that of the Croatian Presidency, which had then named Article 25 more simply ‘Eligibility and participation conditions’.
None questioned the German insistence on keeping its proposition. By keeping a longer and more vague title, Germany would seek to give itself more leeway to keep the decision-making process on the choice of non-Member States in the national fold at the expense of the European Commission.
However, the German Presidency is said to have given assurances that it wanted to propose a formula that would allow close cooperation between the Member States and the European Commission, seeking to calm the latter.
The recent German proposals have indeed caused some teeth-grinding in the EU Council corridors, in that they reduce the autonomy of the European Commission in favour of the Member States (see EUROPE 12552/2), without taking into account the proposals that had been made under the Croatian Presidency.
The German approach, which is essentially intergovernmental in nature, could undermine the overall ambition of protection in the eyes of some and would also not be in line with the spirit of the European Treaties (Article 4 TEU and Article 189 TFEU). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)