Space

5.3 Match ambitions and resources

Resources available today will not be sufficient to meet the objectives assigned to the overall European space policy as defined in this White Paper.

Maintaining the budgets mobilised by the different stakeholders involved in space activities at national and inter-governmental levels is a pre-requisite in order to preserve the capacities built up over the last 40 years. It is only in very limited cases that there could be an added value in transferring some of these tasks to the EU level.

Bringing the benefits of space closer to the citizens and the Union will require further investments in R&D, technology, infrastructures and corresponding services. These would contribute both to strengthening Europes capabilities as a space player and to the various initiatives to promote faster growth in the European economy.

Public investments in space have been proven capable to induce a leverage effect mobilising resources by the other EU actors. This is why the Union should, in the context of its future Financial Perspectives, consider devoting additional resources to supplement existing ones.

These extra-resources would have to be allocated above all in response to users demands, as defined by the needs of the different EU policies. The logical consequence is that an EU space budget line should be a virtual one, with the actual resources being made available to the relevant EU policies and only a fraction remaining at horizontal level for activities of general interest.

To complement ESAs efforts in particular, the Union should act both upstream  to support basic research and research infrastructures- and downstream, to facilitate the inauguration and deployment of space infrastructures and the sustainability of the corresponding operational services, particularly those that involve international co-operation.

Some of these initiatives may give rise to public private partnerships as it is frequently the case when infrastructures for general public interest have to be deployed, which in turn give rise to a number of services some of which are of a commercial nature. GALILEO is such an example.

The intensity and timing of public intervention must of course depend on the public interest and risks involved and be based on sound cost/benefit arguments. A number of scenarios for raising Union spending on space can be envisaged. But the actual volume of resources eventually committed will depend both on the ambitions of Member States and the capacity of the Unions space system to react and absorb them.

The risks may be high, but so also may be the public and commercial benefits. This is a good reason why pooling resources and sharing investments at the European level is the sensible way forward, not least because of the guaranteed access for commercial providers to a huge market of more than 450 million people.

A first analysis of the resources required to implement the White Paper objectives as well as possible scenarios are provided in annex 2.