Space policy: EU to boldly go to new frontiers of financing

Europe needs a “new approach” to financing its space-related industries, EU leaders have said as they announced the creation of EU funds designed with this aim in mind.

“The space sector is still perceived by investors as too risky,” industry commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska (pictured) told attendees at the Annual Conference on European Space Policy in Brussels on 22 January.

She said that, based on the results of a study carried out for the Commission and the European Investment Bank, she was calling for “the design of a smart financing approach” to space. “We also need to change the mindset of the space sector in Europe, but also of the rest of the economy towards the space sector.”