The German Presidency of the Council of the EU is reportedly pursuing an intergovernmental reading of European space policy in new draft conclusions defining the key principles for the European space economy in preparation for the meeting between ESA and the European Union in November. These draft conclusions were expected to be discussed at the EU Council’s ‘Space’ working party on Tuesday, 15 September.
Little has changed in terms of content (see EUROPE 12557/10). The Presidency insists on several main principles, including a clear division in European governance between the European Space Agency and the EU, while highlighting the role of Member States.
Yet, as a new development, the German Presidency—in its proposals that were obtained by EUROPE—adds in the recitals a reference to the Convention establishing the European Space Agency (ESA) and stresses, in this context, that the purpose of said agency is to elaborate and implement a long-term space policy “at intergovernmental level”.
However, this addition would be an interpretative reading of the Convention, which clearly indicates in Article II that the agency elaborates and implements a long-term European space policy but which does not explicitly mention an intergovernmental dimension.
Citing the EU treaties (Article 189 of the TFEU) in the recitals, the German Presidency additionally limits itself to highlighting the sole need for the [European] Union to establish its relations with the ESA in an “appropriate” manner.
A reading that would be very restrictive, we are told, given that the EU’s scope of action is much broader—even overlapping with certain ESA missions—than that mentioned in the draft conclusions.
These proposals resonate with those put forward by the German Presidency on the EU Space Programme regulation, which still seems to favour intergovernmentalism at the cost of a more supranational action in the space field (see EUROPE 12552/2).
To consult the new German proposal: https://bit.ly/3kqccI9 (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)