ABSTRACT
Activities in the space sector are often still the domain of states. Despite the growth of privately funded space endeavours and the growing commercialisation of the sector, frequently described as NewSpace, major space projects continued to be procured by public entities or intergovernmental organisations in order to implement public space policies. For over 35 years, ESA mainly performed this task for its Member States with the exception of purely national, often military, programmes. As direct benefit for their financial contributions, ESA Member States received a “fair return” in the form of contracts awarded by ESA to national industries of the member states participating in the organisation’s optional programmes.
Today more than ever space projects constitute an important tool for implementing political and socio-economic goals and policies. Already in the beginning of the new millennium the EU realised the potential of space activities with regard to the implementation of numerous policies of the Union. The development of an EU space policy was the decisive step that elevated space projects to a new economic level in the Union. With their growing economic importance space projects came to share the fate of most other subjects of public procurement: public procurement regulations.
Under the traditional ESA procurement rules the most dominant aspect of procurement was the implementation of the required geographical return quota. With the EU stepping onto the stage, procurement in space projects is, however, now subjected to the strict EU procurement regime. The first project to come into contact with such procedures was Galileo – Europe’s highly ambitious undertaking to establish its own independent global satellite navigation system. The Galileo procurement process may well be the most complicated procurement undertaking one could possibly envisage as the premiere for applying EU procurement rules to space projects. This premiere heralded a new era for public procurement in the space sector. With it grew the understanding that a number of aspects well established on ESA level for many years may indeed prove useful also for the EU projects, however mostly in view of the contractual terms, not subject to this chapter, such as conditional stage payment contracts, rather than the core procurement process which still has to follow the EU Financial Regulation as main legal basis.
Accordingly, for economic operators to successfully play an active role in space projects they more than ever have to understand the intricacies of the procurement regulations they have to operate under. This chapter sets out the two international procurement regimes of importance for companies intending to participate in Europe’s public space projects.
