By Tim Hepher
PARIS, Sept 8 (Reuters) – France is pressing ahead with a space summit shunned by the U.S. tech giants and hampered by a lower-than-expected turnout from European leaders as President Emmanuel Macron seeks a stronger role for Europe in the competitive maelstrom of space.
Organisers had billed the International Space Summit in Paris on September 9 and 10 as a forum for decision-makers, corporations and scientists from 120 nations including rival space powers U.S. and China to find ways to cooperate and improve regulation.
But White House concerns about what it perceives as a pro-European agenda prompted four U.S. space firms including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to pull out, scrapping a handful of announcements, sources said last week.
Germany, which is officially co-chairing the summit but has increasingly looked at odds with the French hosts on space policy, said on Friday that Chancellor Friedrich Merz would not attend because of other commitments. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will also not attend, her office told Reuters.
France has been leading calls for Europe to increase its autonomy in space while Germany appears less willing to close the door on SpaceX, which dominates the modern launch market.
Paris and Berlin have also struck a contrasting tone on the fragmentation of Europe’s efforts to counter the influence of Musk’s Starlink, with Macron backing the European Union’s IRIS² secure satellite constellation, while Germany planning its own secure network.
Organisers played down gaps in attendance and said the event would still feature U.S. firms among 2,000 delegates expected at the glass-domed Grand Palais, built as a symbol of industrial ambition more than a century ago.
DECLARATIONS, CONTRACTS ON THE AGENDA
The informal political gathering is not expected to produce decisions.
France, however, is trying to secure a number of broad declarations on topics, such as space traffic and access both to space and the scarce frequencies needed to operate there, an issue dividing companies in the United States and Europe.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is scheduled to give a keynote policy speech on Thursday. China is also due to attend, officials said without elaborating.
The meeting is also expected to be a showcase for commercial announcements timed to raise the profile of the event, echoing billions of euros of deals announced at a French summit on AI last year.
France is historically Europe’s leading space power dating back to its 1950s ballistics programme but Germany has overtaken its neighbour as top contributor to the European Space Agency.
Europe spends about five times less than the United States on space investments, according to European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher.
He told reporters ahead of the event that ESA is drawing up emblematic proposals for Europe to break its reliance U.S. rockets to launch human astronauts into space.
Other topics include a roll-call of European concerns about space including the growing issue of security, according to Philippe Baptiste, France’s higher education minister.
(Additional reporting by Tom Sims, Giselda Vagnoni and Gianluca Lo NostroEditing by Tomasz Janowski)
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