EU explores giant leap to become global space power

By David Cronin

Date: 09/09/04

A PLAN to transform the EU into a global Space power is under consideration at the Council of Ministers, European Voice has learned.

Its key recommendations are that the Union's member states share their Space navigation resources, fuse their civilian and military programmes and allow for collective access to them. The priority, it says, "should be for Europe to define common standards for all planned and future Space programmes".

The plan was discussed yesterday (8 September) by the Council's politico-military group. It is envisaged that it will be debated at ministerial level by the end of this year.

According to the paper, Space-based sensors "might constitute the only means allowing for timely detection of some of the most dangerous forms of terrorist attack and for providing, where necessary, proofs of the origin of the attack to the international community". But it states that "reliable access to comprehensive strategic and early warning information provided from Space-based observation assets is still today the privilege of a very limited number of states".

France is the only EU country with a Space-based surveillance system, while Germany is building one. Only the UK has access to US Space facilities for defence purposes.

"Becoming a global Space power is undoubtedly out of reach for any individual EU member state but is achievable by all member states together," the paper adds.

Daniel Keohane, of think-tank the Centre for European Reform, said: "Europe has a lot of useful Space technology but governments are only realizing it now, particularly since the Iraq war. Surveillance can be used to detect terrorist chatter or to find terrorist camps."

He noted that while most European Space programmes have been non-military in design, they could still have defence applications. For example, although the Galileo satellite network is primarily a commercial project, defence experts say it could be used by military planners to manage troops and munitions.

EU states currently spend around €l5 billion on Space, one-seventh of the US Space budget. But while about half of the American expenditure has a defence component, only l550 million of the EU's is defence-related. France and Italy are the top spenders, allocating 0.09% of their gross domestic product to Space exploration. They are followed by Belgium at 0.07%, Germany at 0.04% and the UK at 0.02%.

Keohane said the EU should "spend less on things like conscript troops and outdated weapons systems" to be able to increase the Space budget.

Burkard Schmitt, from the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris, said that the barriers to enhancing the EU's Space capabilities were political, rather than technical. The willingness of the new European Defence Agency to liaise with the European Commission in Space research should remedy that situation, he added.

"It is not necessary to spend as much as the US in these areas. It is more important to bring the civilian and military components together."

Jean-Pierre Darnis, from Italy's Institute for International Affairs, pointed out that "if Europe wants to maintain a Space capacity, then security-driven demand seems to be the main trend for it".

The draft constitution adopted by EU leaders in June sets out Space exploration as one of the Union's objectives.

Article III-155 instructs the Union to "draw up a European Space policy". But a senior official with the European Space Agency said he expects Space cooperation to continue on an ad hoc basis between governments, rather than be an area in which the EU acquires substantially increased powers.

The Council's politico-military group has discussed plans to define common standards among Member States for all planned and future Space programmes, 8 September 2004.