On Friday, the French leader’s office downplayed the last-minute decision by American space giants, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, to skip the event, made under pressure from the White House. Suffice to say that the French President Emmanuel Macron’s international space summit is not going according to plan.
The U.S. boycott is only one of several challenges facing the gathering on Wednesday and Thursday in the French capital. About 120 international delegations have been invited, with Chinese officials expected to attend.
Why did the US boycott?
Primarily, the US are weary of fuelling an European space program, one which will counter their own. Six participants with first-hand knowledge of the summit’s organisation described it to WTX News as a poorly coordinated event with an unclear outcome. They were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
“It’s falling behind schedule, it hasn’t really been coordinated with the major players in the European space sector, and it’s not entirely clear what its purpose is,” said a senior space expert involved in the summit’s preparation.
“And now that the White House has effectively decided to use it against Emmanuel Macron, it’s becoming even more awkward — it shows that, from a diplomatic standpoint, they didn’t do what they should have done,” they added.
Next week’s event aims to gather the international community — including leaders, large corporations, startups and researchers — to discuss issues including the regulation of space activities, competitiveness, security and defence, and space exploration.
Macron is keen to ensure that France and Europe remain credible space powers, with an independent launch capability and their own global satellite communications system, in an effort to reduce dependence on U.S. technology.
The French president’s office insisted Friday that the absence of SpaceX and Blue Origin — two of the world’s leading space companies — will have little impact on the summit.
“If certain countries or actors don’t want to participate, in a way, that’s their loss,” an Élysée official told reporters on Friday.
“There are American companies participating, and there will be announcements. We are not seeing a trend where the U.S. is turning its back on Europe at this space summit,” said another Élysée official. Amazon’s satellite business Amazon Leo, for example, will be represented by one of its vice presidents, a spokesperson for the company confirmed.
‘Badly managed’
The summit’s expected outcome includes declarations on sharing scientific space data, allocating radio satellite frequencies — a controversial issue — and managing space debris. However, it is still unclear at this stage who will sign them.
Participants said there is little clarity about which countries will attend, at what level, the schedule and what to expect.
“The structure of this summit — as is often the case with international summits — is rather unconventional, and I’m not sure the Élysée has any real goals other than to showcase France,” said a senior official working on the frequency declaration, who previously participated in the organisation of last year’s Paris AI summit.
“It will allow France to show that it is a player in the space sector, even though the resources and strategy aren’t keeping pace. And it will allow for some low-level geopolitics, without addressing the real issues surrounding European funding and capabilities,” the official added.
The logistics are also chaotic and “last-minute,” the official said.
Invitations were only sent over the summer — and some were still being sent as late as Friday — while negotiations on final declarations have already started, two participants said. The guest list also surprised many space officials, as they argued it left out key players.
Adding to the confusion, Macron’s adviser in charge of the summit, Claire Vernet-Garnier, left her job one month before the event.
In late August, the Élysée organised a briefing to try to prepare for the summit, but left many questions unanswered, several space officials said.
“It has been badly managed, it’s the worst Macron-organised summit I’ve seen,” one of them said.
‘A lot at stake’
Although the summit’s organisation is raising questions, European officials and space industry representatives still hope the event will help boost Europe’s space sector profile.
“There’s a lot at stake in the days ahead, because the clouds hanging over European space policy are still quite dark and quite numerous,” French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said on Friday as he laid the cornerstone for a new factory for reusable launcher startup MaiaSpace.
The cancellations pushed by the Trump administration highlight strained EU-U.S. relations over space policy.
Washington has lobbied against the European Commission’s EU Space Act, a proposed rulebook for space activities the U.S. sees as targeting American companies by imposing EU rules on them.
A Franco-German push to allocate more satellite radio frequencies to European companies, including the EU’s IRIS² satellite network, is also seen as detrimental to Starlink. One of the Élysée officials conceded in the call with reporters that international discussions around space regulation were difficult.
“The two key issues at stake are indeed access to two limited resources — orbit and spectrum — in a context where SpaceX has a policy of complete dominance over both,” said the CEO of a satellite company, who spoke on condition of being granted anonymity.
“It’s therefore not surprising that Europe wants to focus on this, and it’s not surprising that the U.S. administration is responding with a boycott,” they added.