ABSTRACT

The rise of the EU as a space actor, especially as initiator, owner and operator of large-scale programmes such as Galileo and GMES, has raised a number of questions with regard to industrial policy. Based on the experiences from the Galileo programme’s full operational capacity procurement round and on the present discussions on space industrial policy within the EU, this chapter contends that, whereas the EU’s political ambitions in space have been discussed at length and have become reasonably well defined, the specific policy tools and legal instruments to put them into practice are far from complete. An industrial policy for the space sector needs to marry the EU’s political ambitions to the economic specificities of the space sector. At present, this is a work in progress, with opinions diverging between the EU and the Member States. We analyse the frames used in the discourse of the European Commission and the European Space Council on the topic and conclude by stressing the need for a bespoke space industrial policy as an integral part of the EU’s space policy.