The regulation on the EU’s space programme will have to be amended to include the future constellation project for secure connectivity, a senior European Commission official confirmed at a conference on Wednesday 10 November.
Guillaume De La Brosse, Head of Unit responsible for innovation and start-ups in the Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS), confirmed in a reply that the Space Programme Regulation will have to be amended.
“We need a legal basis to start working on procurement issues notably”, he explained, addressing the issue of the timing of the launch of the initiative while the studies have not been completed.
He then clarified: “When it comes to the legal adjustment to be made to the EU space regulation, we don’t need to have all elements of the studies” that are about to be concluded. “We already have some key parameters, so that we can already begin to assess how we will define the legislative amendments to the space regulation”, was his assurance.
This confirms the doubts about whether or not to reopen the regulation, which had not been fully clarified in the EU Council’s Space Working Group (see EUROPE 12825/2). A “logical” decision, confirms a source, but one that may present certain risks, notably the reopening of the debate on governance between the different institutions. This is a sensitive issue that had caused tensions during the negotiations (see EUROPE 12592/21).
Mr De La Brosse acknowledged that Europe was entering this market late. However, he stressed the aspects that differentiate this constellation from others in the world, namely: its multi-orbital architecture based on quantum technology, its model built on a public-private partnership and its geographical coverage extended to Africa and the Arctic.
He indicated that the project will rely on synergies with the existing European programmes Galileo and Copernicus. GovSatCom will in fact be the first building block, he said. The low earth orbit constellation will, among other things, improve Galileo’s signal. The project will also contribute to improving space situational awareness in the context of space traffic management.
Asked by EUROPE about the estimated budget for such a project, the senior official said it was still premature to come up with a public estimate, due to the many parametric uncertainties. It will also be necessary to look at the interactions with other European policies, notably the neighbourhood policy, he said.
The European Commission is expected to present an initiative in early 2022 under the French Presidency of the EU Council (see EUROPE 12815/2). The European Space Summit on 16 February and then the European Space Agency (ESA) ministerial meeting in November 2022 will be key moments to move the project forward (see EUROPE 12817/24). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)