The Member States of the European Space Agency (ESA) unanimously adopted the Matosinhos Manifesto, on Friday 19 November in Portugal, at the end of theIntermediate Ministerial Meeting (IMM), giving the Agency a mandate to further develop a range of projects to strengthen Europe’s role in space.
“It’s an historic milestone”, the ESA Director General, Josef Aschbacher, told a press conference regarding the adoption of the manifesto, admitting that he was “exhausted“ by the negotiations but “very happy”. “The manifesto is a mandate to work on accelerators and inspirators”, he explained, indicating that ESA will now work on the precise modalities, the contributions of the different actors and the overall frameworks for implementation. “This is not a trivial exercise”, he huffed.
Thus, the three ‘accelerator’ projects supported by the Member States aim to address immediate societal concerns: - greening economies to combat climate change; - crisis management (especially during natural disasters, which are intensifying with global warming); - the protection of European space activities (space debris - a particularly topical issue after the recent destruction of a satellite by the Russians - see EUROPE 12836/16).
The two ‘inspirational’ projects are the return of samples from an icy moon (see EUROPE 12817/24) and the development of human space exploration programmes, with the Director General citing the Moon and Mars as examples.
The next major political meetings, he recalled, will be the space summit in Toulouse on 16 February (see EUROPE 12817/24), which would be a “political” meeting to give impetus to projects, and above all the ministerial meeting to be held on 22 and 23 November, where budgetary issues will be decided.
Copernicus. Asked by a journalist about the talks between the European Commission and London on the UK’s contribution to the Copernicus programme budget, the director-general said that the issue had not been addressed directly during the meeting, but that it was an issue that needed to be addressed as soon as possible. The deadline for reaching an agreement was set for the end of November (see EUROPE 12807/15).
To consult the Matosinhos Manifesto: https://bit.ly/3DLmcFN (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)