The EU’s Space Policy Framework from a Defence and Security Policy Approach: A Belated Rush or an Elaborated Trial?

2021 was a year of transformation for the European Union’s space policy; by making several structural changes, the Space Programme Regulation created the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA). 1 The EU aims to stimulate its space economy, strengthen and broaden the sector’s market base, and develop European capacities while boosting the region’s overall competitiveness. However, the actual framework for such a comprehensive approach to space is the fruit of several decades of dealing with multifaceted challenges. In recent years, space has become a geopolitically strategic area where it is essential to protect the broad European interests and to ensure autonomous access and freedom of action in the political, business and, more recently, defence fields of space – in several cases, including the Member States’ competencies. It was not always as straightforward as it is now, however…