Europe’s future in space is being decided in Bremen: how the first day of the ESA Ministerial Council went

We are at Bremenin Germany, where the Ministerial Council 2025 of the European Space Agency. Two days in which the top management of ESA, together with the ministers for space policies of the member countries – including Italy – are deciding the future of Europe in space in the next 15 years.

The Director General of ESA Josef Aschbacher proposed the action plan in the morning Strategy2040divided into five key objectives:

1. Earth observation for environmental and climate monitoring;
2. scientific research and space exploration through space missions in the Solar System;
3. autonomy for access to space with the development of European launchers;
4. economic and industrial competitiveness European and, last but not least
5. inspire and engage citizenship and the sphere of policy.

To achieve this objective, ESA requested a budget of 22 billion euros to the member states, an increase of around 2 billion compared to what was requested in the last Council three years ago, also motivated by the increasingly strategic role of space and its infrastructures are having especially in the field of national defense in this particular historical period, in which the European Union finds itself squeezed in the east between the war in Ukraine and the growing security threats coming from Russia, and in the west by the threats of withdrawal from support for European defense by the USA.

As reiterated by Aschbacher, today we find ourselves in one «perfect storm» and for this reason, more than in the past, space is playing an increasingly crucial part of a great geopolitical, economic, industrial game on which not only national security but also environmental issues depend, especially in light of the relative failure on the part of COP30 in Brazil to “keep alive” the Paris Agreement. The new ESA strategy, according to Aschbacher, will serve to make Europe a protagonist of this challenge that he sees as main “competitor” The USA (currently engaged in the return of humans to the Moon with the Artemis program) and the Chinawhich in recent years has been showing enormous and rapid progress in the space sector.