Europe’s seven labours to achieve true mastery of space
by Olivier Lemaitre
Europe is not losing ground in the space race for lack of talent, technology, or money. It is losing it because of itself. Across public institutions and private industry alike, a set of structural tensions is pulling Europe’s efforts in space in divergent directions, blurring priorities, fragmenting initiatives, and standing in the way of any shared strategic ambition.
These tensions stem from the three major fault lines that divide European political decision-makers today:
“Techno push” vs. “Demand pull”
Should priority be placed on the development of new technologies, or on the advancement of cost-efficient services that answer actual needs?
“Direct economic growth” vs. “Enabler of activities”
Should we prioritise the development of an industrial base that is capable of directly generating economic growth and conquering global markets, or one that would answer the needs of public European and national institutions, thereby enabling indirect growth, such as GNSS or meteorological satellites?
“National” vs. “European”
Should we focus on national capacities or favour the pooling of resources and measures to enable economies of scale?
Seven difficult political choices
Tension 1: European autonomy versus economic growth and international competitiveness
A first tension, and certainly one of the most important, opposes the aspiration to consider “space” a strategic asset for European autonomy, and therefore to pursue a policy of reducing external dependencies, against the equally strong objective of considering this sector an enabler for direct economic growth, and therefore to “make it competitive on a global scale”.
The discourse has certainly evolved towards strategic autonomy under the pressure of events — US space dominance, the China/Russia rapprochement, global commercial and industrial competition, etc. — but in reality, the apparent shift clashes with pre-existing patterns. Indeed, how can one speak about autonomy when it is still impossible to impose European preference for launch vehicles, when several Member States keep using the extremely vague concept of “Open Strategic Autonomy”, or in the face of the pusillanimous stance of Europeans after US unilateral changes of strategy affecting collaborative endeavours?
The deleterious effects of this tension are amplified by a polarised perception of the sector by policy-makers: on the one hand, the established players are seen as costly and not innovative; on the other hand, for several years, public authorities have nurtured the hope that the “new space” players will be able to grow exponentially in markets that have not yet really materialized and be supported as much as possible by private investments.
Here is the fact that too few policymakers dare to state plainly: institutional demand is, by far, the dominant driver of global space activity. In 2025, it was five times larger than commercial demand. And yet European policy continues to be shaped by the fantasy that a privately-led commercial boom is just around the corner. This is what I call the “SpaceX mirage.” The assumption that what happened in the United States can be replicated in Europe ignores the initial conditions entirely: the scale of public support SpaceX has received from the US government — and continues to receive — is simply without equivalent on this side of the Atlantic.
ISOS, In-Space Operations and Services, is a telling symptom of this confusion: presented by the European Commission as both a contribution to the “new space economy” and a means of protecting orbital infrastructure, it struggles to convince either as a market proposition or as a security policy. Nobody has defined who will buy these services in a commercial sense; nobody has defined which institutions will actually use them in a sovereign sense, or under what authority. When a flagship initiative cannot answer the most basic questions about its own purpose, the underlying strategic confusion is a structural problem.
This tension is not only political; it is also reshaping industry structures — particularly among major French primes — where a tension is emerging between long-established organisational structures, historically geared towards open competitive tenders for private operators and export markets, and a market environment whose centre of gravity is rapidly shifting towards domestic institutional demand — ESA, EU, non-French national programmes — whose stakeholders have expectations and operating methods that are entirely different from those of commercial or export clients.
Tension 2: developing useful capabilities at the European level versus feeding national ambitions for autonomous capabilities
A second tension opposes the desire to develop operational space capabilities at the European level to the growing aspiration of many Member States to retain total control over strategic capabilities at the national level. It is not always clear whether this is about true strategic capabilities, or more about ensuring the sustainability and growth of their own national industrial base. This tension is further inflamed by a shared delusion about the size of the prize. The often-repeated figure of “$1.8 trillion” for the future space economy has become a political narcotic: it gives every Member State a reason to maximise its own slice of the cake rather than pool efforts, while uselessly duplicating the efforts taking place in other Member States, and it papers over the fact that the exponential commercial growth it promises has stubbornly failed to materialise.
Tension 3: the industrial need for a critical market scale versus national preferences for preserving domestic industries
A third tension, a consequence of the previous one, arises between the economic requirement to reach a “critical mass” in order to maintain a viable and profitable market, and the long-standing national tendency to protect domestic industrial bases. This preference for national priorities translates into complex procurement schemes, leading to a multiplication of industrial actors, very few of which have a sufficient volume of activity to sustain profits. European supply chains cannot be sustained by open commercial demand, especially since the collapse of the GEO satcom market, but on the other hand, the fragmentation and duplications that exist in the European institutional market prevent institutional demand from reaching the critical mass required by industrial constraints.
One could consider this as simply the result of bad political choices, but the reality is that it is more the consequence of a lack of knowledge within the institutions of Europe’s real industrial capabilities, as well as the dependency of the European space ecosystem on unknown factors. Even within the Commission, which has been painstakingly trying for almost 20 years to identify these dependencies through the “Joint Task Force ESA-Commission-EDA”, no comprehensive effort appears to have been undertaken to identify the dependencies affecting the EU space programmes.
Tension 4: the desire for a fully sovereign industrial capability versus inadequate collective financing
A fourth tension concerns the gap between the ambition to maintain a comprehensive and sovereign industrial capacity in Europe and the lack of political will to collectively finance such an ambition. The truth is blunt and should be stated as such: without a coherent and substantial increase in public investment in space, there will be no sovereign industrial capability in Europe — not at the EU level, and not in the Member States either. No amount of “new space” optimism, public-private partnership rhetoric, or B2B or B2C market projections changes this arithmetic. Private investment follows institutional demand; it does not replace it.
Tension 5: the growing EU role in space policy versus the reliance of most European institutional actors on ESA
The EU, a centralised supranational political power, is gaining importance in the space sector thanks to its programmes, budget, and political legitimacy. Nevertheless, it remains dependent on the executive power of an agency whose legitimacy is intergovernmental: the European Space Agency.
The first issue is the difficulty of finding a credible and acceptable compromise on where “development” ends and where “exploitation” begins, which is theoretically the responsibility of EUSPA, a Commission agency, at least for some parts of the EU space programme. The recent proposal for a Regulation “on the European Union Space Services Agency” does not clarify the situation.
The second issue is the frustration of the Commission at having to rely on a partner that it cannot control, ESA, and whose recommendations it must almost always accept, given its lack of technical expertise — though, at least for the Navigation programmes, this has very significantly improved.
Third, this tension is aggravated by a growing ambiguity between what is considered ESA. Is ESA the Director General and its executive team? Or is ESA 22 Member States acting collectively? Even amongst ESA Member States, such ambiguity remains: often delegations refer to “ESA”, but they are actually referring to its executive team. In practical terms, this means that the Commission is not dependent on an intergovernmental agency composed of 19 EU Member States, but more on ESA’s Directors and civil servants.
Tension 6: the perception of French national influence versus the reliance on French expertise in European space policy
A recurring source of tension stems from the perception, held by some Member States, that French institutional actors may leverage European space policy frameworks in ways that disproportionately benefit the French space sector through European funding. While the amount of contracts awarded by the EU to French industry does not appear to substantiate this perception, it continues to influence certain political narratives.
Nevertheless, Europe continues to rely significantly on the very French actors it often criticizes, owing to their well-established technical expertise. Such expertise has been built over several decades through the implementation of a comprehensive national space policy, supported by the considerable scale of France’s public administration dedicated to space activities.
Regardless of whether France’s predominant influence over European space policy direction is disproportionate or not, several Member States have clearly moved to assert their own leadership — a shift facilitated, in part, by France’s relative budgetary disengagement. However, this emerging competition for leadership and influence over European space policy does not, in itself, resolve the broader question of whether European institutions can draw on a sufficient level of technical expertise. Looking ahead, the question remains whether the diverging budgetary trajectories of the three major players, France, Germany, and Italy, will lead to a meaningful rebalancing in favor of Germany and Italy — and, crucially, whether such a rebalancing would ultimately help ease existing political tensions while reinforcing Europe.
Tension 7: interest in strengthening European supply chains versus persistent incentives to procure from the United States
A final tension lies between the strategic interest in reinforcing European supply chains — which implies sourcing components and services from European partners — and the persistent incentives to procure from the United States. However, the issue is that EU Member States are often not viewed by other EU Member States as actors needing to be “wooed” and, honestly, they are even sometimes seen as actors against whom to “take revenge”. At the same time, many Member States continue to have an interest in sourcing supplies from the United States, because they find cheaper equipment or components there, or because it is part of a broader historical relationship, or because they wish to avoid a hardening of US positions on international trade issues.
Conclusion
Europe possesses cutting-edge technological capabilities, considerable financial resources, albeit not as considerable as the United States, and — more recently — a genuine political rhetoric of autonomy. But rhetoric does not replace strategy or investment. Reducing these seven tensions to administrative inconveniences would be a mistake. Unresolved, they will quietly do more damage to Europe’s position than any external competitor. Succeeding in space requires Europe to reconcile a fragmented political structure with the demands of a sector that rewards scale, consistency, and long-term commitment. Most of all, it requires political leaders to stop pretending that those two things can be reconciled painlessly, and to finally make the choices that genuine mastery of space demands. In particular, it means working together.
Olivier Lemaitre is Eurospace Secretary General. A biologist by training and with a first career in nature conservation, O. Lemaitre get himself lost in space 23 years ago, first as part of the Belgian federal administration. He later joined the private sector with positions in Thales Alenia Space, as Head of EU Affairs and now Eurospace, where one of his main mission is to ensure that the association provides relevant information and recommendations to the decision-makers to help them make the best use of the capabilities and expertise of the European space Industry.