Paris

Europe should consider a sweeping reorganization of its space programme to integrate its civilian and military endeavours, argues a French report released last Friday.

If approved, the reorganization would be the largest since the European Space Agency (ESA) was founded in 1975.

The report, from a commission headed by Roger-Maurice Bonnet, who led ESA science for a decade before retiring in 2001, speaks of a “major crisis” in European space policy. It calls for the revival by 2005 of a high-level European Space Conference to spearhead the programme's revival.

Contentiously, the report also says that the programme should be led by military requirements — albeit while embracing the interests of science, agriculture, navigation, telecommunications, environment and technology development. The United States spends six times more than Europe on its space programmes, it notes.

“We think that the major effort of the United States in military space is a lesson for Europe,” says Bonnet, adding that the transformation of ESA into a joint military–civilian agency is only one possible route to building a stronger programme. The report also advocates government intervention to consolidate Europe's fragmented aerospace and defence industries.

The French government is likely to back the report when it responds to it in March — but some other governments, less taken by the idea of competing with the United States in this sphere, may not be so enthusiastic.

Nevertheless, the explosion of the Ariane V rocket late last year points to the need for reform. Arianespace, the rocket's maker, is struggling to remain profitable. France's national space agency, the CNES, the largest in Europe, is in a budgetary crisis, and other national space programmes are stagnant or in decline.