European Space Summit 2022
The main European leaders meet in Toulouse to promote Europe's position as one of the world leaders in space
On February 16, 2022, the European ministers responsible for space and representatives of the European Union, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, met in Toulouse (France) to celebrate the European Space Summit.
The main objective of the Summit was to define the EU’s space strategy and its space ambitions in order to face the increasing competition with countries such as the United States, China and Russia and with private actors such as SpaceX. With this objective, the summit dealt with three key axes and presented new European space initiatives.
The first axis dealt with the initiatives for the launch of a new European constellation of telecommunications satellites by 2030 and thus provide Europe with a secure and independent connectivity infrastructure, promoting the smallest launchers capable of being reused and putting satellites into low orbit. small or nanosatellites.
The second axis focused on the importance for Europe of space traffic and debris management. Since its current presidency, France wants Europe to adopt regulations governing access to and use of space, with the ambition of later bringing this code of (good) conduct to the international level.
The third axis dealt with space exploration. For European astronauts, independent access to space is necessary and urgent.
These three axes were analyzed in different debates in which several companies from the space sector also participated, such as Share my Space, Exotrail, Sodern, U-Space, Hemeria, the Aerospace Valley competitiveness cluster, Airbus Defense and Space, E-Space, Agora Industries-Comat and Espace-Thales.
In addition, the Summit was attended by Emmanuel Macron in his capacity as President of the Council of the European Union. In his speech, Macron demanded from the other European countries more ambition and more unity in the design of space policy to correct the delays and mistakes made in recent years against other great powers. For this reason, he stressed that it is important to advance the idea of ”European sovereignty” and achieve “a European vision of space conquest.” In this sense, Macron indicated that “Space is the key to all our sovereignties: without control of space, there can be no technological, industrial or strategic sovereignty, nor detailed knowledge of the great environmental and climatic problems. Therefore, space is a priority for Europe”.
The video of Emmanuel Macron’s speech is available at the following link:Stratégie spatiale européenne: discours du Président de la République Emmanuel Macron.
