On 28 February, Johann-Dietrich ’Jan" Wörner, the current Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), will finish his mandate after 6 years at the top of the Agency. With EUROPE, the German civil engineer looks back on his successes and failures during his years at the head of the Agency, and in particular his relations with the European Union. (Interview by Pascal Hansens)
Under your mandate, the Ministerial meeting in Sevilla in 2019 was a big success, in comparison to the one before in Switzerland in 2016. How do you explain that?
There are several reasons. Number one, Space is seen more and more among many countries as being important for their national development.
Also, we started very early to prepare it. I started at the top of ESA in 2015 and the next ministerial was at the end of 2016, just one and half year later (EUROPE 11681/26). It was very short, I can tell you!
So, directly after the 2016 ministerial I started to prepare the one of 2019. We had discussions with Member States but also with citizens, to get their opinion. And I put on the table a value of 14.3 bn euros, and they subscribed 14.5 bn euros. So, some say that I should have asked for more than that.
That’s typical from me: I was not asking 20 in order to get 10. I was asking for 14.3 because I believed very strongly this is what we needed. And I got 14.5 bn euros.
One of your main priorities was to establish a United Space in Europe. Did you achieve what you wanted to do?
I believe we are not where I would like to be. We have very strong national interests in space. But I would like to see more European spirit.
There is an example where I was always a little bit disappointed. We have astronauts, and astronauts have national passports, but they are also European astronauts. When an astronaut comes back from space, suddenly, the nation from where the astronaut is coming from is requesting day by day to have this astronaut for any public activity. This is something which makes me a little bit sad. I tried to change it. But astronauts are first national heroes.
The United Space in Europe is also linked to the issue of relationship between ESA and the EU. How do you see the current relationship with the European Union?
Let me go back in the past. In 1975, the ESA Convention was written. It’s a masterpiece of lawyers, and very European, which was alone for a long period in European space activity.
There were some attempts of the EU under the commissioner Verheugen (former commissioner for enterprise and industry from 2004 to 2010) in the field of space exploration. Then they started with Galileo and Copernicus. The chancellor Merkel asked me by the way if Copernicus could not be a national program. I said: “no! It must be a European programme!”.
And then, we had in 2008, the Lisbon Treaty (with introduces the article 189 TFEU on space – Editor’s note). Some people are arguing that this is clear, we have a new framework, so the old one is gone. But this is not right because we have different partners. You have Switzerland and Norway as ESA Member States, which did not vote for the Lisbon Treaty. So, from a legal point of view, there is some stress between the ESA convention and the EU treaty.
ESA is owned by its Member States. Without their money, we are nothing. But at the same time, we are working with the EU. This must be done through a partnership. And this is in the day-to-day work rather difficult.
And on the Financial Framework Partnership Agreement (FFPA) (EUROPE 12606/6), where do we stand? Are we close to an agreement?
We solved lot of issues, but we still have a complicated one. This is the relation between the Commission, EUSPA in Prague and ESA. Thierry Breton says that it is very important that the so-called contracting authority remains with the Commission. Now EUSPA is also looking for getting this contracting authority and that would mean in consequence that we have EC, then EUSPA, and then ESA.
And I think this is not at all in agreement with the convention of ESA. And in my opinion, this is not a partnership! This is a hierarchy, which I don’t think is the right way. But it’s up to my successor (Josef Aschbacher – EUROPE 12625A10) to solve that issue, he has experience with the EU, he was in the EU, in the Commission.
I looked in EUROPE’s archives, and I found that back in 2003 (EUROPE 8444/25), France under the Jacques Chirac mandate, was proposing to move the ESA within the scope of the European Union. Do you think it could be a solution?
Yes, it could be a solution, but that would be a very complicated one, because ESA has the principle of geo-return. I know that on the French side, the geo-return is not seen as the best thing. But look it from the European perspective. With the geo-return, we allow smaller countries, with smaller contributions to be part of a big game! There is no monopoly! And by the way the 14.5 bn euros in Sevilla is based on geo-return, otherwise Member States would not have paid it!
During a Competitiveness Council of May 2018 (EUROPE 12029/12), you came to the Member States by presenting your vision of a new space organisation. Where do we stand on that point?
So, what I proposed at that Competitiveness Council was to have a joint downstream entity. And at that time, the Commission was not happy about that. But now in the space council’s conclusions of last year (see point 27 – EUROPE 12606/6), it says ESA and the European Commission should develop a joint activity in the downstream. It’s now a decision and I am really happy about that. I hope this will be realised very soon.
The Commission proposed lastly two things: one alliance for launchers (EUROPE 12634/8) but also a connectivity constellation (EUROPE 12634/9). What is your view regarding those two projects?
On the connectivity constellation, that’s a smart idea and ESA is behind that. But we have to see that connectivity is something which is done with the industry. It should not be a purely public activity, a mega constellation paid by the public. That’s, from my point of view, not the best solution. It should be a public-private partnership.
For the European launcher alliance, I don’t have really a final information about what Thierry Breton meant when he said it. It could be that he is thinking about what we have in the US, the United Launch Alliance, so an alliance of industries. It could be that he is thinking about an alliance of the different actors in Europe, like ESA and the EU. It could be a mix of both, I don’t know! But an industrial alliance would erase competition, and I hope it’s not what he means. We need competition in Europe. But if Breton means an alliance between ESA, EU and national agencies, that could be a good idea.
I believe the best solution for the future is really to start with a new process to look at what the public requests for public launchers, what the orbits are, what the payloads are, so what the public sector needs are and how much they want to pay for it, and how many launchers per year they. And this is something this public alliance could define and then develop into public-private partnerships.
And that’s the difference to what we did in 2014, when we decided about Ariane 6 and Vega-C. Because at that time we decided the overall profile of the launcher and now the question is who pays for it.
Linked to this question of launchers, how could we help to create a European New Space? Do you think that a Buy European Act could be a solution, that we need to create a true captive market?
We have already a captive market. We won’t launch a Galileo now with a Chinese rocket. So, we have a captive market. The captive market in Europe is not very big. But the captive market in America is huge. I believe that a Buy European Act could have the opposite result we are looking for, because still Ariane is the launcher of satellites from the United Arabic Emirates, from the US, from Japan. A pure European market is too small. So, we are the winners of global cooperation!