When France hosted the recent International Space Summit in Paris, the Élysée Palace said that 90 governments and international organizations and nearly 1,100 companies attended. In his closing speech, President Emmanuel Macron cited more than €20 billion in commitments across more than 50 projects.
But the biggest news concerned missing attendees: US space leaders SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, and Starcloud. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reportedly warned US companies against attending, saying participation could signal support for European policies that Washington regards as discriminatory.
Europe remains dependent on US space technology. SpaceX controls commercial launches and Starlink satellite connections are impossible to replace at scale. Ukraine’s war highlighted the vulnerability: Starlink has at times limitedRussia’s access to its services during military operations.
Yet European moves toward protectionism will fail to reduce its reliance on US tech. The bloc’s response, the EU Space Act, proposed in June 2025, is designed to replace a patchwork of national rules with common EU requirements on safety, resilience, and sustainability. It applies not only to European operators but also to non-EU companies serving the European market. Washington complained that a proposed “giga-constellation” category for companies operating more than 1,000 satellites targeted and discriminated against large US operators.
Although a recent progress report on intra-European negotiations dropped the giga-constellation designation, foreign operators could continue to face more onerous requirements than EU companies. Washington recently challenged the Space Act’s extraterritorial reach in a complaint to the World Trade Organization, demanding that Europeans recognize launch licenses issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration rather than impose duplicative European requirements.
Another flashpoint concerns access to Europe’s 2 GHz mobile satellite spectrum band, crucial for Starlink-style communications. The existing rights expire in May 2027. The European Commission proposes giving “new entrants” to the EU a privileged route in the new allocation. EU governments want to go further by requiring EU control over access to the secure band. Can Europe harden a critical communications layer without turning security criteria into a de facto nationality screen?
As it moves to restrict American access to its market, Europe is trying to build Starlink alternatives. The EU’s IRIS²constellation now comprises 348 planned satellites, 330 in low Earth orbit and 18 in medium Earth orbit. The first launches are scheduled for 2029, with services launched from 2030 and full capability planned by 2032. At the Paris summit, Airbus and Thales Alenia Space began work on the first 66-satellite layer. IRIS² will not match Starlink’s scale soon, nor is it designed as a like-for-like consumer rival. Its strategic value is a European-controlled secure connectivity layer for government, defense, and emergency use.
Europe is also moving to change how it spends public funds. The European Space Agency has traditionally used a geographic return principle, steering industrial work back toward countries in line with their financial contributions. At the Paris summit, French President Macron called to replace rigid geographic return rules with open competition that can increase efficiency and lower prices.
But reform is not imminent. Europe’s Space Agency will not take up the issue at its upcoming year-end summit, only at its ministerial meeting in 2028. The bloc first needs to agree on its 2028-2034 budget, which is currently being debated.
Another issue is industrial consolidation. Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo want to combine French, German, and Italian satellite businesses into a joint venture, Project Bromo. The new entity would count about 25,000 employees and roughly €6.5 billion in annual revenue.
The project has sparked antitrust concerns. Airbus has reportedly offered divestments to reassure regulators, but Germany’s OHB has warned that the combination could weaken competition and disrupt its supply chain. Two European objectives are colliding: scale against competition.
Even if it goes ahead, Project Bromo represents no panacea. While the consolidation could create scale in satellite manufacturing and services, it excludes launchers, failing to recreate SpaceX’s vertical integration of spacecraft, launch, and network operations. Airbus remains a 50% shareholder in Ariane Group, so European launch capacity exists, but outside Bromo.
European startups are vying to compete against traditional incumbents. Finland’s ICEYE recently won a European Space Agency contract to compete against Italy’s Leonardo for the EU’s future Earth Observation Governmental Service. Poland’s Creotech Instruments received a €52-million contract to build Poland’s CAMILA satellite constellation with more than 90% Polish-developed technology. The company raised PLN 481 million from European investors.
Across these cases, European “sovereignty” means ownership, operational control, data location, trusted supply chains, or guaranteed access in a crisis. A company can be European-owned but dependent on a US launcher; a non-EU operator can keep data in Europe; a publicly funded firm can rely on global capital. Which layer actually needs sovereign control, and which can remain interdependent?
The Paris summit itself demonstrated the difficulty of drawing a clean line. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi invitedFrance and others to become “co-travelers” in India’s next space phase, including its planned 2035 space station. The United Arab Emirates committed $1 billion to a 50-satellite AI constellation led by UAE-based Marlan Space and Franco-American Loft Orbital. Orbitworks is producing the satellites in Abu Dhabi. French artificial intelligence leader Mistral provides software, using NVIDIA chips. Amazon Leo, meanwhile, has ordered six more Ariane 6 launches, taking its European launcher commitment to 24 missions. Airbus is separately building Starlab with US-led Voyager Technologies.
The global space economy is transatlantic. The effort to create a credible alternative to Starlink addresses a real vulnerability. The risk is that rules written in the language of resilience become nationality tests that exclude allies.
Maciej Bukowski is the Head of Energy and Resilience Program at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in Warsaw and is a non-resident fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), where he writes about tech issues and Central European security.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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