Galileo, the Long Road to European Autonomy
Galileo is one of the most ambitious programs ever managed by the EU. As such, it illustrates the challenges and the opportunities offered by the development of a European Space Policy at the political, industrial, economic and international level.
Galileo, the European program for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), was launched by the European Union in 1999. Part of the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), the future satellite constellation is meant to be a leading project for Europe, bringing strategic independence and political status to the continent, allowing Europeans to reap huge benefits from future services while maintaining an industrial and technological basis. The program has been crippled by a series of disputes and delays, however. More than ten years after the official launch of Galileo, the expected date for the Full Operational Capability (FOC) of the system keeps being pushed back. It is currently 2016.
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Galileo, the Long Road to European Autonomy
Author(s)
Christophe VENET
Former Research Fellow
Laurence NARDON
Research Fellow, Head of the Americas Program, Ifri
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Space has become a crucial theme in the main international think tanks’ research activities as it entails important strategic, economic, and technological issues.
Since 2001, Ifri has integrated space in its research, notably by ensuring that the political dimension of scientific and human exploration programs is emphasized, and by supporting reflections on the Code of Conduct for Outter Space Activities.
Today, as part of its research agenda, Ifri mobilizes several of its centers and programs to transversally tackle the theme of space, through three main inputs:
- the competition of powers, driven by the Sino-American rivalry;
- critical points related to mastery of space, such as the issue of autonomous access to space or the mega-constellations necessary for the digital revolution;
- these developments’ challenges for Europe and its status as a space power.
Since the Summer 2020, Ifri has been coordinating a tripartite European Space Governance Initiative, together with two other renowned European think tanks: the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP) in Germany and the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Italy.
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