Cooperation without fragmentation: How can Europe govern space as critical national infrastructure?
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Space is no longer a specialist domain – it’s the invisible architecture that supports economic prosperity and everyday life. And, in a period of unprecedented geopolitical turmoil, it is crucial to national defence and security.
This shift set the scene the 2026 Ambassador Programme at Space-Comm Europe, hosted in partnership with PA. Diplomats, defence attachés, and space agency leaders from more than 20 nations gathered to answer a key question: how can Europe and its allies govern space together without fragmenting effort or slowing delivery?
The urgency has only intensified since last year’s event called for diplomacy to match the pace of the new space race. Space activity is accelerating, dependencies are deepening, and the geopolitical context has become even more volatile. The gap between the risks nations face and the governance structures required to manage them is widening.
A turning point for Europe
European nations and institutions recognise the strategic importance of space. For example, European Space Agency member states have approved a record-breaking budget for the agency’s next three-year period, including an increase in funding for science exploration and dual-use technologies for security and defence.
Despite high ambitions for space, Europe is structurally fragmented. Regulatory regimes diverge and approvals move at different speeds, while national priorities often compete with the need for collective resilience. Europe has world-class research, strong industrial capability, and deep pools of private capital, but lacks the mechanisms to bring these strengths together with the pace and coherence the domain now demands.
Space is shifting from observation to participation. Students are building satellites, future generations may end up applying for jobs on the Moon, and the number of spacefaring nations has doubled. This new era brings extraordinary opportunity, but also greater fragility. The question we must not hesitate to ask: “Does this make sense?” Stability in space, just like during the nuclear age, will depend on diplomacy every bit as much as technology.”
At the same time, threats are compounding. Jamming, cyber interference, proximity manoeuvres, debris hazards, and extreme space weather pose systemic risks. With more nations and commercial operators entering orbit, the environment is becoming more congested, more contested, and more interdependent. Participants at the Ambassador Programme agreed that Europe can’t manage these challenges through national effort alone. Cooperation must become structural. From our discussions, three priority areas for collective progress stood out:
1. Build resilience through shared capability, not parallel effort
Resilience emerged as the dominant concern. Nations depend on each other’s satellites, supply chains, communications, data, and operational behaviour. Yet these dependencies are rarely acknowledged and even less often coordinated. Participants pointed to the need for a shared foundation that enables predictable and trusted operations across borders. A European-led but internationally open model for Space Situational Awareness was identified as the most achievable near-term step. Rather than a new grand architecture, they called for a practical collaboration between existing systems that creates a common operating picture and reduces ambiguity. Cooperation becomes far easier when all nations are working from the same data, for example.
2. Mobilise investment at the scale required
Participants agreed that Europe’s ambitions cannot be financed by government spending alone. The capabilities required for secure communications, Earth observation, in orbit servicing and launch infrastructure demand long-term, coordinated investment mechanisms. This led to a strong call for a regional space finance initiative. Such a mechanism could bring together sovereign funds, pension funds, asset managers, and industry with the goals of unlocking capital, aligning incentives, and ensuring investment flows toward capabilities that are both commercially viable and strategically essential.
3. Make governance an enabler for innovation rather than a drag on it
Current governance structures often duplicate effort or slow delivery. What’s needed isn’t more governance, but more aligned governance – harmonised standards when safety and resilience depend on it, and flexibility where innovation demands it. Participants also discussed an important accelerator that is often overlooked: insurance markets can set behavioural norms faster than treaties by defining what constitutes acceptable risk. Several participants voiced support for bringing insurers and operators together to develop shared risk frameworks, giving governments and industry a practical structure for alignment.
Space is shared, essential, and often invisible until something goes wrong. That is why diplomacy matters. By coming together, we are proving that cohesion can be built even in a volatile world. What looks like disorder is actually the early formation of a system, and it is within our collective authority to shape what comes next.”
Practical actions for the future
Participants were challenged to imagine a 2030 in which cooperation in space genuinely works. A consistent vision emerged: governments operating from a shared picture of activity in orbit. Approvals, data, and standards moving predictably across borders. Financing mechanisms channelling capital into collective resilience rather than competing national programmes. Practical diplomacy grounded in shared data, routine joint exercises, enforceable norms, and transparent communication.
This is not a distant ambition – it’s a realistic outcome. But Europe needs to act quickly and collectively. The following practical actions were proposed:
- Use insurance and risk frameworks as accelerators. Bringing insurers, operators and governments together in a forum to agree what constitutes acceptable risk could help establish shared expectations faster than formal negotiations alone, shaping behaviour through underwriting, assurance and liability norms.
- Encourage investment in security and defence as a driver of broader economic benefits. Encouraging public investment in space infrastructure alongside convening a regional space finance taskforce can unlock private investment. Joint capability, and regional sovereignty, requires significant investment, beyond what governments alone can provide.
- A coordinated approach to low earth orbit congestion, debris risk, and in orbit security. Establish a shared situational awareness framework, starting by federating existing national and commercial data can facilitate safe operations and future enforcement models. The EU SST is a good foundation. By working together, it helps protect satellites, reduce risks, and strengthen Europe’s collective resilience and responsible use of space.
- Focus on making space sustainable. Launching an international effort focused on space resilience and in-orbit security can align risk mitigation, crisis coordination, and sustainability standards. It can also help create clearer expectations for responsible behaviour in orbit, making it easier for governments and operators to act early and protect space over the long term.
The global landscape is changing rapidly, yet our reliance on cooperation is more necessary than ever. Effective governance means matching safe bets on big collaboration structures with practical, bottom‑up action – from technical frameworks to insurance‑driven standards. The next steps will be taken outside this room, and they will rely on choosing action over perfection.”
Diplomacy matters more than ever
Last year’s Ambassador Programme event underscored the need for diplomacy to keep pace with the technological and commercial acceleration of the space domain. This year’s discussions sharpened that view. Rather than an afterthought or a statement of intent, diplomacy must underpin coordination across nations, agencies, and industry, supporting fast action while maintaining safety and sovereignty.
Europe and its allies have the talent, capital, and industrial strength to meet their space ambitions. What it needs is coherence: fewer parallel efforts, more shared structures, and a focus on what can be achieved in the next year, not the next decade.
Photo credit: Max Alexander
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