Brussels, 23/11/2004 (Agence Europe) - A first "Space" Council is to meet on Thursday 25 November in Brussels, bringing together the ministers of the European Union's Competitiveness Council and the Ministers of the European Space Agency (ESA) Council. In total, twenty-seven countries (EU25 plus Switzerland and Norway which are among the ESA's fifteen members) will be around the table for a debate leading to endorsement of a somewhat general policy paper for preparing the future European Space Programme. Adoption of the paper will be endorsed immediately after this by the Competitiveness Council for the EU and the ESA Council.
In order to organise the debate, the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) prepared a questionnaire focusing on four aspects: (1) scope and content of the European Space Programme; (2) management of the programme and its consequences; (3) the principles of industrial policy; and (4) financing, including the role of possible public-private partnerships. These issues will be outstanding after the work of the High Level Space Policy Group, which brought together the representatives of the two organisations and drafted the first guidelines for preparing the space programme.
The Space Council is expected to officially launch the preparation of the European Space Programme by approving these guidelines which specify that the "conceptual base" of the programme should be defined with a view to the Space Council meeting scheduled end 2005. The term "conceptual base" was introduced by Coreper, which thinned down the text for the High Level Group on this point. The High Level Group felt that the Council should, at the end of next year, be able to examine a proposal for a programme. The guidelines to be adopted by the ministers should also specify that the preparatory work must not prejudge the results of discussions underway within the EU on the forthcoming financial perspectives (2007-2013). In the meantime, the second session of the Space Council, in spring 2005, should above all: - identify the priorities of the European Space Programme, including estimation of possible costs; - identify the roles and responsibilities of the EU, ESA and other stakeholders of the European Space Programme as well as the relevant funding sources; and - identify industrial policy principles and funding principles related to the implementation of the European Space Programme.
Relations between the European Commission and the European Space Agency date back twenty-five years but were clearly reactivated when a joint strategy was developed in November 2000 and the satellite navigation programme, Galileo, was launched. A framework agreement, signed in November 2003, has governed relations between the two organisations since end May 2004. The principle of a European Space Policy is embodied in Article III-254 of the constitutional Treaty.