PARIS — The international space summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday and Thursday was meant to show that Europe is getting serious about investing in its space sector. But the two-day gathering under the glass dome of Paris’ Grand Palais ended up demonstrating that Europeans are not spending enough to cut reliance on the U.S. to access space — at least not yet. On the sidelines of the summit, space companies from around the world announced billions in new partnerships and investments, but the big get-together fell short of the public funding announcements needed to access space without U.S. help.
Things had already started to look bad a few days before the summit when American space companies such as SpaceX decided to ditch the event after White House pressure, accusing France of “anti-competitive practices” and disregarding the perspectives of U.S. industry. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also skipped the event, despite it being co-chaired by France and Germany. French officials downplayed the importance of the U.S. absence, stressing that the summit would provide Europe with an opportunity to step up its game on space.
But several participants said that the summit's goals were unclear and that it lacked political commitments from countries other than France to boost public investment in the space sector. On Wednesday evening, Josef Aschbacher, the director general of the European Space Agency, urged European countries to boost funding to the ESA. In a meeting with ministers from ESA member states, he said that by investing €1 billion per year over the next 10 years, Europe could finally afford to send astronauts into space without relying on NASA.
Will we be passengers or pilots?” Aschbacher told ministers. One space official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, said that the countries looked at the proposal with interest, which still needs to be discussed at an ESA ministerial meeting in Rome in December. It is because the public sector is investing a lot,” the official said.
On the first day of the summit, the space industry associations of France, Germany and Italy urged the EU to allocate “at least €60 billion” to the sector as part of its upcoming 2028-2034 budget. Speaking after Macron at the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed that under the Commission's proposal, €131 billion would be allocated to defense, security and space. Macron, meanwhile, called for autonomous European space missions in the coming years, backed by "a European space budget that matches our ambitions" — without quantifying the sums involved.
Even if there were no new public funding announcements in Paris, the summit delivered three technical declarations — on the Copernicus program, on space-based scientific data and on the allocation of radio satellite frequencies — as well as making a broader call for a more ambitious European space policy. Other participants interpreted the fact that few heads of state and government showed up as a sign that they did not fully back Macron’s initiative. Gilles Rabin, a former official at France’s space agency CNES and now an independent consultant, said that Macron’s diplomatic efforts were also undermined by the fact that he will leave power next year, as he can’t run for a third mandate.
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