New Development of Space Policy of the European Union and the Prospect of European Space Policy

The existing European space policy includes the space policy of the European countries, the inter-governmental space policy under ESA framwork and the space policy under the common diplomatic and security policy of the EU. With the harmonization of the EU and the ESA, the leader of the European space policy is being transferred from the ESA to the EU. The multilateral levels of the European space policy is developing toward a unified European space policy. But because the coordination mechanism on space policy between the EU, the ESA and their member states hasn-t been established, and the existing European space policy does not have the coordination mechanism on international cooperation, therefor, efforts are still needed for a unified European space policy.