[Satellite News – 6-27-08] With France set to assume the presidency of the European Union (EU) in July, there could be major changes in European space policy in the immediate future.
    France’s laid out its space strategy in a June 17 white paper on defence and national security. The document outlines the importance of space in France’s military objectives and indicates that France “will actively support the rationalization of the European space industry, with a focus on intelligence-gathering, navigational and communications satellites.”
    “We want the EU to become a space power,” an unnamed French government official told Satellite News. “Today, the EU does not count in space. We want it to become a world-class space leader. So we want the EU to be the political voice to give a space vision. This voice does not exist today. The European Space Agency (ESA) does not give a political vision. It gives a scientific and technical vision. We want a political vision.”
    This expansion of the political vision of European space is at the heart of France’s strategy when it assumes the presidency of the EU for a six-month term. “In Europe, we have 40 years of scientific excellence,” the official said. “We have never used the political support to boost our space program. We consider that the EU is now mature enough to provide more support. We know the ESA’s excellence is proven, but we want to create another co-pilot, which would be a political guy who would help realize Europe’s space aspirations.”
    These vision likely will be an overriding theme at several upcoming space policy meetings, including an informal meeting of EU space ministers planned in Kourou, French Guiana, shortly as well as a Sept. 26 meeting of the Space Council and a Nov. 25 meeting of the ESA Ministerial Council.

Focus On Four Areas

While initial objectives will center on programs such the Global Monitoring Environment and Security (GMES) and Galileo programs, France wants its EU presidency to create “new momentum and new impetus for space in Europe.” This will focus on four areas: climate change, space for the economy and growth, space for exploration, and space for security.
    In the climate change area, France sees a need not for more satellites but for more efficient processing and use of the data already generated, said the official. “The Cabinet of Researchers on the climate change are full of space data. The problem is they don’t have enough capacity to analyse this data,” the official said. “What we lack in Europe is sufficient capacity of a high-powered computer or supercomputers that exist in some places. For climate change, we are proposing a European center for climate change research on the example of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva. We want to have a supercomputer 100 percent dedicated to climate change research in order to analyze the data that comes from the satellites. For example, there is data coming from Envisat that is not able to be processed due to the lack of computing capacity.”
    Greater cooperation among European countries in the defense arena was laid out in the French government white paper. “Particular efforts will be made in the area of space surveillance, involving very high civilian and military stakes, capitalising on close links with our European partners.” Six European countries — France, Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany and Belgium — already have discussed the next generation of spy satellites. “If other member states want to join, they shall get the possibility to do so,” the official said. “This spy satellite capacity is an important thing. We want to open it to the whole European Union and anyone who wants to come and join this program.”
    France also will increase its funding, calling for allocation of defense funds for space applications to double in the coming years, starting from the current annual level of 380 million euros ($596.5 million).
    Coordinating a European space policy despite different national interests could be easier said than done, but “there has been a big shift and an awareness that national states cannot sustain themselves and their own (space) programs any more, neither financially nor politically,” the official said. “Even big countries like the [United Kingdom] France and Germany only have a very limited amount of national satellites, and their next generations tend to become European. I think there is a trend to more Europeanization of infrastructure.”
    National space agencies could also evolve. “It could be very interesting for Europe to have research centers in different places that would look at projects with different views, and then we would compile this research,” the official said. “It is the evolution from national space agencies that exist today, and that might evolve into more research centers which bring ideas to the European space agency, for example. That is the only one that looks like implementing Europe wide space programs. The French presidency wants to go one step further, and if you look at the different space powers in the world, whilst the scientific and technological motivation is present everywhere in China, the [United States], India and Russia, the technological and scientific motivation does not stand alone.”
    Another objective is to make the European space sector more entrepreneurial and foster an environment where companies look to develop services based on space capabilities. “By 2015, space should impact every citizen in Europe,” the official said. “We know space through GPS, telecoms and television. In the next 10 years, we can expect a tremendous range of new services coming from space directly to citizens.”
    The entrepreneurial spirit must be improved or Europe could be left behind by other regions of the world, the official said. “If it is not European companies, Asian companies will do it. We have invested for 40 years into space. The question is, ‘Do we want other people to benefit from it or do we want our own European people to benefit from it?’ What we can do at the EU is provide a framework to foster innovation. We want space to become an e-market. For the first time in history, the entry ticket to a space business will be low, allowing SMEs, universities, young entrepreneurs to join. This is also a good way of boosting European cohesion.”

Barometers of Success

With big objectives come financial obstacles, which will need to be overcome. “We have to solve a major problem in the EU side, which is the whole financing side for space in the research programs,” the official said. “We have 1.4 billion euros ($2.2 billion) set out aside for seven years in space. It is only for research. So things like creating the right infrastructures cannot be financed by research money. We need actually to get a new budget line for space other than just research. This debate will happen in 2011 and hopefully will come into force in 2013. This will actually be the moment when we will see the French presidency has succeeded.
    Greater cooperation on the financial side also will help meet these needs, the official said. “If we want to more involve the EU, than the EU needs to complement the ESA budget with EU money. That does not necessarily mean more money but a reorientation of research money for operations, for example.”