Europe turns to space to boost resilience

European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius set the stage for discussions on the potential for space to support security at a conference entitled “Space for European Resilience: rising to the collective challenge”, citing the importance of secure intelligence, secure positioning, and secure communications and connectivity.

The activity was organised under the auspices of the Danish presidency of the Council of the European Union, and with the support of the European Commission, by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI).

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher presented the European Resilience from Space programme, a new optional programme that will be open for subscriptions from Member States at next month’s ESA Ministerial Council. The proposed system would integrate remote sensing, connectivity, PNT (positioning navigation and timing), spectrum monitoring, and Internet of Things systems, with the aim of providing users with the most secure, agile, and rapid response capabilities possible. 

The ESA Director General said: “In this moment of rapid change, there is a critical need to synchronise European initiatives by aligning space for defence competencies, avoiding duplication and pooling resources for scale. We still remain too fragmented to guarantee Europe with genuine, comprehensive and autonomous space resilience. We have an opportunity to change that, and we must.”

The European Resilience from Space programme, to be proposed in Bremen on 26 and 27 November 2025, constitutes the first programmatic pillar supporting the future Earth Observation Governmental Service (EOGS) of the EU. This service is aimed at providing highly reactive, dual-use, independent space-based Earth observation capabilities to deliver rapid, reliable, and secure data, products and services. ESA Directorates central to the proposal were represented by Director of Earth Observation Simonetta Cheli and Director of Connectivity and Secure Communications Laurent Jaffart. 

The conference also heard from representatives of the space agencies of France. Switzerland, Poland, and Denmark following keynotes from Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Danish prime minister and Secretary General of NATO, Major General Pierre Ciparisse who is Commander of Belgium’s cyber command, and European Interparliamentary Space Conference chairman, Mario Kadastik.  

The future role of space for security will be further described in the EU budget being decided under the Multiannual Financial Framework 2028-2034, in addition to the funding decisions to be made at ESA’s Ministerial Council. Today’s event follows the success of the 3rd ESA Security Conference, hosted in Warsaw under the auspices of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU in April 2025.