Astronauts, heads of state, as well as major economic players in the space industry are set to unite on Wednesday and Thursday at the international space summit, co-hosted by France and Germany, at Paris’ Grand Palais, Euronews reports.
Several US companies reportedly withdrew from the event, due to pressure from Washington over support for "EU policy positions."
Despite this, the summit comes at a strategic crossroads for the European space industry, described by President Emmanuel Macron as an opportunity to "bring Europeans together around a common ambition" and develop a "shared vision of Europe's place on the map of global space powers by 2035" when he announced the event in October 2025.
According to the Elysée, the summit will focus on international space cooperation and strengthening space security. In recent years, Europe has increasingly sought to challenge US dominance of the global space market: developing its own homegrown rockets and increasing funding for space at both a state and bloc-wide level.
Europe has historically invested 0.07% of GDP into space programmes, compared with 0.24% by the US.
But 2025 marked a turning point, as the European Space Agency (ESA) approved a record-breaking €22.3 billion budget for its three-year funding cycle (2026–2028) in November, with €35 billion for space for security and defence.
Lunar mining has also emerged as a potential avenue for securing clean-energy resources and critical raw materials, as Europe works to move away from Chinese and Russian dependencies.
