Feb 2009 04

The Final Frontier0

Space. Where nobody can hear you scream. At the bills.

The EU has only recently properly begun to eye up the possibilities emerging from getting space on its list of competences. That was thanks to one man, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, of Emperor Bokassa's diamonds fame. As chair of the praesidium during the drafting of the EU Constitution, he pretty much single handedly lay behind a 'legacy gift' to the EU of inserting a clause adding Space to the areas in which the Commission could meddle.

Most famously, the net result to date has been the hundreds of millions frittered on the Galileo programme, whose only apparent worth is as a prestige project replicating existing satnav technology in peacetime, and allowing the Chinese military access to GPS when it goes to war over Taiwan or some Indian outpost in the Himalayas.

It now emerges (Council Resolution 2008/C 268/01) that the ambition doesn't stop there. After a meeting of European ministers last July at "Kourou, the space port of Europe" (presumably just left of Tattooine), governments have confirmed their desire of "federating through the EU [...]their demand for space applications". This includes the objective of "promoting the development of an appropriate regulatory framework to ease the swift emergence of innovative and competitive downstream services".

If you don't have a babel fish to hand, the Commission spells it out by indicating that it is intending to pass more legislation and spend more money.

It also recognises explicitly that the ironmongery that will be put up in space will have military applications. Reading the small print in the treaties, it would appear that in thematic areas where the EU has previously agreed to cooperate, satellite use would seemingly fall to Qualified Majority Voting.

Britain has a proud tradition of involvement in space exploration, even if Beagle 2 did end up as a paperweight on Marvin the Martian's desk. For years it has done this through the European Space Agency, an international body, and not through Brussels bureaucrats. It would be a shame for scientists and for the taxpayer if starry-eyed politicians now got in the way of the stars.

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Lee is a Research Fellow at the TPA. Co-author of the hit Bumper Books of Government Waste, he is an extensively published EU expert and front bench adviser.