Brussels is foiling a German attempt to delay the launch of a multi-billion euro EU project to create a cyber-secure satellite system for spy agencies, governments and armies, POLITICO reports.
The planned constellation, called IRIS² (short for Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite), is backed by France and involves more than €3bn of public money to build a European alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink space communications network.
As the industry moves closer to signing major contracts, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck wrote a letter to the EU executive in early April saying the IRIS² project is too expensive, that the work will not be fairly divided between France and Germany and that the planned services are not advanced enough to be worth such costs, officials confirmed to POLITICO.
Habeck said work should be suspended while IRIS², the bloc’s third major space programme after the Galileo geonavigation network and the Copernicus Earth observation constellation, is fundamentally rethought. Habeck wrote in his letter to the Commission, first reported by Handelsblatt:
“Too much is at stake to make hasty decisions.”
However, the budget for IRIS² has already been allocated, EU legislation has been fixed and the European Space Agency is ready for funding – that a national effort to manage procurement at this late stage of the game is doomed to failure. Speaking on condition of being granted anonymity to discuss an ongoing procurement process, an EU official said:
“Industrial lobbying through a member state has no impact.”
Thierry Breton, France’s Commissioner for the Internal Market and architect of IRIS², promised in January to sign “the biggest space contract in EU history” by the end of March to get the programme up and running. That didn’t happen: the final proposal from the Airbus-led SpaceRise consortium didn’t arrive until 1 March.
The proposal is now being reviewed by the EU’s Tender Evaluation Commission, which oversees the procurement process. The commission has held talks with SpaceRise to improve the final offer, and Berlin attributes this process to Habeck’s demands to rethink the situation. A spokesperson for Habeck’s economic affairs ministry said:
“There is agreement that the overall costs must be reduced. There is also agreement that the applications must be expanded if IRIS² is to be a success.”
That’s not how Brussels frames it. The EU official said:
“There is no link whatsoever between the German letter and the optimisation step recommended.”
They described Habeck’s push as “ill-founded” and “pure lobbying tactics.”
The hope remains that IRIS² contracts can be confirmed in the coming weeks. Europe’s efforts to promote its programme to compete with SpaceX have been hampered by national controversy: IRIS² has been accused of serving French aerospace interests. One national space diplomat on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive program said:
“The Germans have a point. They were not happy that the Commission wanted to go forward only with one consortium.”
German space company OHB, heavyweights Airbus and France’s Thales are part of SpaceRise, which has no rivals in the race for the contract to build and operate a network of some 170 satellites in low Earth orbit. The lack of competition makes it difficult to come up with a competitive bid for the EU.
