Space Sovereignty and Secure Connectivity
IRIS², Galileo, Copernicus and Europe’s strategic space infrastructure.
Europe’s space policy is no longer a specialised industrial file. It is becoming part of the continent’s strategic operating infrastructure: the system through which governments communicate securely, armed forces preserve connectivity, economies receive trusted timing, border and maritime authorities monitor activity, crisis managers see events in near real time, and critical infrastructure remains functional under stress. The central problem is dependence. If Europe cannot control the communications, navigation, observation, launch, ground-segment and resilience layers on which these services depend, its strategic autonomy remains incomplete even where the underlying activity appears civilian or commercial.
The report analyses this infrastructure through four connected layers. It first defines why space has become a sovereignty problem rather than a narrow aerospace market. It then examines the EU’s legal and institutional architecture, including the Union Space Programme, IRIS², GOVSATCOM, Galileo, Copernicus, SSA, NIS2, the Critical Entities Resilience framework and the proposed EU Space Act. The third section maps the capability stack, from secure SATCOM and PNT to Earth observation, launch autonomy, ground infrastructure, cybersecurity and downstream analytics. The final section assesses the companies and industrial positions most exposed to recurring sovereign demand, programme execution risk and the financial logic of Europe’s space infrastructure build-out.