As far back as December 2013, the European Council called for the member states of the European Union to develop their defence capabilities and so enhance the “strategic autonomy” of the EU. Since then, the idea that the term encapsulates has come up time and again.
In 2016, it was made part of the EU’s Global Strategy doctrine. It was promoted again in late 2020, championed in particular by France. And it was the thread that ran through Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the European Union speech of 2023. “Von der Leyen’s EU aims to make itself resilient in the face of external challenges, to solidify its borders, and to ensure support for the economy,” said Frances G. Burwell, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
And yet, when it comes to space, an increasingly vital area of the world economy, with important applications in sustainability, navigation, and defence, Europe still relies heavily on the United States. Though Europe, owing to its long tradition of scientific investigation and free inquiry, as well as its spirit of innovation and immense cultural diversity, is a world-leader in many areas of space technology, it does not have a satellite launch capacity that is anything like as mature as that of the US.
Consequently European commercial satellite operators depend on US launch services from companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX to get their hardware into space. Even the strategically important Galileo navigation satellites — Europe’s answer to the US Global Positioning System (GPS) — were dispatched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
A European launch legacy
Later this year, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) scientific Hera probe, which will study the Didymos binary asteroid system, will be launched on another Falcon 9. Given the absolutely vital role of space in world affairs, European dreams of strategic autonomy look some way away.
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