Europe wants Space independence: can it really escape US?

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

At a Paris summit, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the continent to strengthen its outer-space autonomy. The absence of major US aerospace firms reflected growing differences between the European bloc and Washington.

Europe still relies on US infrastructure and companies such as SpaceX to transport some of its astronauts and launch some of its satellites into orbit.

ESA (European Space Agency) chief Josef Aschbacher has likewise called for heavier investment to cut reliance on outside powers.

The ongoing Ukraine conflict has made the point clear: US Starlink, the satellite constellation operated by SpaceX, has become vital for communications - and yet, from a European perspective, left it exposed to the owner’s discretion, as seen with Elon Musk’s shifting positions. That conflict began as an American proxy war of attrition but is increasingly becoming a European proxy conflict.

Back to outer space, Europe now seeks its own systems - can it succeed while wrestling with its own energy and industrial crises?

The answer may lie not in European autarky, but in strategic diversification: the EU could build sovereign core capabilities while maintaining multiple technological partnerships, including with countries outside the Western alliance system.

To be clear, the EU is not starting from scratch. It operates  Galileo  for navigation, and Copernicus  for Earth observation, alongside the  Ariane and Vega launch systems, and a large European satellite-manufacturing industry.

Budgets rose 12% in 2025 to €13.5 billion; ESA member states pledged a record €22.3 billion at the 2025 ministerial meeting.

Ariane 6 has restored Europe's autonomous heavy-lift launch capability: in June 2026, it successfully placed 36 Amazon Leo satellites into orbit.

IRIS², the planned secure-connectivity constellation, is explicitly framed as a component of European digital sovereignty - but not expected to reach full operations until around 2030.

Space independence requires more than rockets: high-performance metals, propellants, semiconductors, precision manufacturing, skilled engineers and long-term investment.

All of that rests on a competitive industrial base. And European industry still faces gas and electricity prices two to four times higher than those in the EU’s main trading partners.

ESA’s 2026 Space Economy Report notes that while public budgets grow, private investment in Europe fell 8 percent in 2025 to €1.4 billion - even as private capital surged, driven largely by the United States.

The EU, I’ve recently argued, reduced reliance on Russian pipeline gas - only to become more exposed to globally traded LNG and distant chokepoints. Diversification does not always equal independence.

The same pattern threatens space: higher domestic costs can erode competitiveness and recreate reliance on foreign capital, components or services.

Economic nationalism is rising worldwide, yet rebuilding capacity under high energy prices remains costly for Europe.

Full re-industrialization would require coordinated procurement, stronger supply chains and greater production capacity, as Max Bergmann and Sophia Besch argued (in their 2023 analysis of European defense) - fragmented procurement and industrial structures continue to limit the bloc’s ability to translate spending into strategic capacity.

Moreover, according to a GIS analysis, the continent possesses substantial technological capability but struggles to turn it into coherent strategic power amid internal divisions.

Space is becoming another geopolitical frontier, much as the deep sea and continental shelf have been. Control over communications, navigation, reconnaissance and future lunar infrastructure all translates into power.

Europe therefore finds itself between two major space powers, the United States and China - with Russia remaining a significant space actor.

If complete autarky is unrealistic, the more promising path is pragmatic multi-alignment.

India already offers a concrete opening: ESA and ISRO recently extended  cooperation through 2032 on exploration, sustainability and advanced technologies.

EU diplomats note that both sides pursue strategic autonomy and view Indian launchers as a diversification tool.

Beijing and Moscow admittedly present harder political terrain for the EU, under current conditions - yet Europe's Galileo system also operates within a broader multi-constellation environment that includes China's BeiDou and Russia's GLONASS

Selective technical cooperation, where politically and legally feasible, would not necessarily imply full political alignment.

Here, the Arctic is a useful case in point: geography creates shared interests that geopolitical divisions cannot simply erase; Canada and European states still discuss engagement with Russia even amid tensions.

The same reasoning applies beyond Earth.

Open strategic autonomy remains realistic: enough sovereign core capacity so that no single external power can disable critical European infrastructure. The bloc could still accommodate its transatlantic security architecture - while insulating itself from single points of failure.

Energy, industry, technology and space form an interconnected whole; progress in one supports the others, meaning sector-by-sector fixes will not suffice.

Europe’s space ambitions of autonomy will succeed only if they rest on diversified partnerships eastward - that is, pragmatic multi-alignment beyond a Cold War mentality.