Abstract
This chapter is dedicated to the evolving role of European research in the field of space and in particular the potential impact of the future European Defense Fund covering both research and capabilities development at European level. While the EU already demonstrated its capacity to financing dual-use space programs, this Fund could open the way to more military-oriented research. Still, many questions remain open, such as how much of this fund will be dedicated to space, to finance what exactly, which impact will the Brexit have on research funds, and, above all, to what extent national ministries of defense will accept European deeper involvement in this sensitive kind of affairs.
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Notes
- 1.
Since its founding in 1998 – the EC explains – the overall funding allocated to Copernicus until 2013 by the EU and ESA has reached over €3.2 billion including the development and initial operations of the services, the space, and in situ infrastructures. For the service component, the EU has provided funding of up to €520 million and ESA up to €240 million. For the space component, ESA made some €1650 million available and the EU €780 million (to finance FP7 and Copernicus Initial Operation) including access to space data from national satellites (EC 2011). Moreover, “the agreed 2014–2020 MFF foresees approximately €4.3 billion for the implementation and operation of the Copernicus program, and about €7.1 billion for the Galileo program” (MFF website, accessed on 5-2014). The space theme in the research program of the EU foresees about €1.5 billion of cofinancing (Union and industries) for the next 7 years, which includes R&D for the two main flagship programs but also research in the domains of science, launchers’ technologies, and protection of space infrastructures, to name but a few (Regulation on H2020, 2013) (Marta and Stephenson 2016).
- 2.
ESA’s convention (ESA 1975) says at Article 2 that the purpose of ESA is “To provide for and promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among European states in space research and technology and their space applications” (italics added by the author). ESA recognizes that this article does not prevent the agency from being active in the security and defense field, rather it prevents the agency to develop aggressive programs.
- 3.
See, for instance, the Italian program Cosmo Sky Med or the French program Pléiades, both in the domain of Earth observation (radar and optic). Or launchers programs, used for deploying both civil and military missions into orbit or the French-Italian Athena Fidus Program, for dual-use telecommunications.
- 4.
Which are geostationary orbits used mostly for telecommunications and low Earth orbit used mostly for Earth observation and early warning.
- 5.
Among European countries, we can quote TIGRA exercises and agreement for information exchange between TIRA (Germany) and GRAVES (France) radars for tracking and surveillance (complementary functions). The USA has also contributed through bilateral data exchange agreements with some EU countries and with ESA (Gruss 2014, 2015).
- 6.
A synthetic and recent analysis of space threats is provided in EUISS 2016.
- 7.
“Between 2006 and 2013, defense R&T expenditure in the 27 member states participating in the EDA has been reduced by 27%. In 2014, EU27 defense R&T expenditure amounted to circa EUR 2 billion. This has not been compensated by greater cooperation: over the same period, collaborative defense R&T has decreased by more than 30%.” “The Commission is therefore ready to mobilize EU funds to support defense research at the EU level. However, such funds must complement and catalyze national efforts and not duplicate or substitute them” (European Commission 2016b).
- 8.
Brexit will impact the EU general budget, notably the GNI-based resources, which represent almost 70% of the total budget. See, for instance, the UK national contribution to the budget in 2015: it was of about 12.5% (http://ec.europa.eu/budget/figures/interactive/index_en.cfm, accessed in June 2016).
- 9.
Copernicus security services include support to European External Action Service, maritime surveillance, and border control.
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Marta, L. (2018). The Evolving Role of the EU in Space-Related Security and Defence Research. In: Karampekios, N., Oikonomou, I., Carayannis, E. (eds) The Emergence of EU Defense Research Policy. Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68807-7_17
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