The space Competence of the EU

In the space domain, the EU benefits from the competence that the Member States have agreed to confer. Until the recent adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, there was no explicit reference to space in the EU's constitutive instruments but it did not prevent that two major flagship space programs (Galileo and Copernicus) were set up during this period. In the absence of a definite legal basis for space activities, the Union's policy had then imperatively been linked to an existing legal competence of the EU or the EC.

The evolution that treaties experienced during the past twenty years has shown an enlargement of the EU/EC competences that, to a large extent, have exceeded the purely economic dimension and have indeed brought the EU/EC closer to space and its applications. The 1986 Single European Act introduced in the EEC Treaty a chapter devoted to Research and Development (R&D) that allowed the EU/EC to progressively deal with space. The Maastricht Treaty enlarged this competence by presenting the promotion of research and technologic development as one of the main tasks of the EC if it really wanted to achieve its other objectives. Well-known changes were also introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty, notably regarding the decision making procedures as well as by the Nice Treaty, which strengthen the legal basis for Common foreign security and defense policy.

Parallel to the treaties' evolution, the EU's competences have never stopped expanding to new fields, bringing it ever closer to space and its various applications. Creativity and dynamic uses of the existing competences have allowed the EU to progressively interfere in the space sector. Nevertheless, in the absence of an explicit legal basis and a clear institutional framework, the actions of the Union have remained difficult.

The Constitutional Treaty was supposed to compensate for these difficulties while a "space clause" recognized for the first time that the EU had a competence in the space domain. But the successive French and Dutch noes struck a blow to the advancements conceded by States in space policy. However, on the basis of this space clause, articles related to space were introduced in the Lisbon Treaty.

Unlike the constitutional treaty, Lisbon does not merge the various EU treaties into one text. Nevertheless, it looks forward to creating a legal framework for the EU's actions in fields that were not covered before.