EU releases revised Space Act proposal, and it is as odious as the earlier drafts
This label would be more accurate if it read
“NOT made in the European Union”
The Council of the European Union (EU) in Brussels at the end of March released [pdf] a revised draft of its proposed Space Act that would impose a single regulatory framework for all space activities across the entire EU.
I have just finished reading this odious 157-page monstrosity, and I can say without question if passed it will not only isolate Europe from all international space commercial activity, it will squelch any possibility that Europe will develop its own space industry.
The first draft of the law, first put forth in 2025, was routinely blasted by American officials, by think tanks in and out of Europe, and by industry representatives. It imposed byzantine regulations on Europe’s space industry while also demanding that non-European companies be required to follow these rules as well, national sovereignty be damned.
The newly released draft does the same, but now does so in a manner that is somewhat vague and unclear.
That lack of clarity includes what is required to comply with the regulations. “There are a lot of things where it says you need to do X. What counts as X? Who knows,” said Gabriel Swiney, director of the Office of Space Commerce’s policy, advocacy and international division. “It will probably be determined at some point by some European committee or standards body.”
“Without regulatory clarity with what the regulatory picture should be, it’s really going to have a stifling effect on what industry is striving to do,” said Janna Lewis, senior vice president of policy and general counsel for Astroscale U.S.
The first draft was delayed and apparently rejected because the member nations of the EU opposed it. It appears this new version, having done nothing to ease their concerns, might already be on its way to the dead letter office.
We shall see. If there is anything dear to the hearts of the EU bureaucrats in Brussels, it is imposing insane regulations on others. It appears those bureaucrats haven’t given up — despite opposition by numerous European governments — and are working hard to win that right in space.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This label would be more accurate if it read
“NOT made in the European Union”
The Council of the European Union (EU) in Brussels at the end of March released [pdf] a revised draft of its proposed Space Act that would impose a single regulatory framework for all space activities across the entire EU.
I have just finished reading this odious 157-page monstrosity, and I can say without question if passed it will not only isolate Europe from all international space commercial activity, it will squelch any possibility that Europe will develop its own space industry.
The first draft of the law, first put forth in 2025, was routinely blasted by American officials, by think tanks in and out of Europe, and by industry representatives. It imposed byzantine regulations on Europe’s space industry while also demanding that non-European companies be required to follow these rules as well, national sovereignty be damned.
The newly released draft does the same, but now does so in a manner that is somewhat vague and unclear.
That lack of clarity includes what is required to comply with the regulations. “There are a lot of things where it says you need to do X. What counts as X? Who knows,” said Gabriel Swiney, director of the Office of Space Commerce’s policy, advocacy and international division. “It will probably be determined at some point by some European committee or standards body.”
“Without regulatory clarity with what the regulatory picture should be, it’s really going to have a stifling effect on what industry is striving to do,” said Janna Lewis, senior vice president of policy and general counsel for Astroscale U.S.
The first draft was delayed and apparently rejected because the member nations of the EU opposed it. It appears this new version, having done nothing to ease their concerns, might already be on its way to the dead letter office.
We shall see. If there is anything dear to the hearts of the EU bureaucrats in Brussels, it is imposing insane regulations on others. It appears those bureaucrats haven’t given up — despite opposition by numerous European governments — and are working hard to win that right in space.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Went to the University of Salamanca in Spain. It was 1978. Amazing. Capitalism everywhere.
With the latest developments in Spain & the EU, I fear that a return visit would be disappointing.
I do not think many understand where most all of the rules and regulations and agendas that the Liberals, Leftists (Democrat leadership in America) and Globalists actually are founded in.
“What is the agenda? U.N. Agenda 2030 is a bunch of aspirational “High IQ” Liberals, Leftist and Socialist Obamaite Globalists and social engineers attempting to mandate how you will be thinking, how you will be speaking and who and what you will be allowed to be doing. It is the organized effort to specifically destroy America as founded. “Destroy The Patriarchy”, that is the actual real world long-term core mission goal. This is their North Star and guiding light.”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/core-mission-to-the-agenda
ALL of the EU’s silly authoritarian rules and regulations are fully based in fulfilling one thing, U.N. Agenda 2030. U.N. Agenda 2030
I hope everyone at least here on BTB clearly understands that this is all focused in making manifest this clearly laid out road map to the future that ALL especially Democrat leadership in America is focused on achieving.
And in fulfilling that agenda America must be diminished and made impotent.
This is where all of the “White men must be replaced by women”, “Destroy the Patriarchy”, which means destroy America s founded movement in the world emanates from.
Your confused? You want to understand every insane thing that the Democrats are doing or attempting to do in America?
Read their Bible, read their road map to the utopian future, U.N. Agenda 2030. It is all there and they are all read in on it.
When Trump first campaigned on “draining the swamp” I thought he meant the U.S. But he’s created a whole new world order based on economic self-interest and cooperation all nations.
The Abraham Accords was the start. Now the U.S. is holding talks directly with Lebanon and Iran for the first time in 40 years.
Look who was not invited to any of the meetings: The EU, NATO, the UN. They controlled the Middle East through chaos and conflict. The new world order sees them as a negative influence and an irrelevant joke.
This 20 minute video by Mike Steger of the PAC The Promethean Action gives an overview of Trump’s realignment:
“Trump Forces Iran to the Table: The New World Order Takes Shape”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPXeCV1Z-jg
0:00 The global shift begins
1:20 The strategy behind the Iran deal
3:05 Blockade pressure and economic impact
5:10 Diplomacy with teeth: Islamabad talks
7:20 Iran moves closer to a deal
9:00 Nations aligning: Pakistan, India, China
11:15 A global reset in motion
13:10 The long game: from Riyadh to today
15:20 The new Middle East framework
17:10 Europe’s decline and the old order fading
18:50 What this moment really means
The EU seems, here, to be indulging its usual delusions of agency. Too bad for European NewSpace entrepreneurs if the Eurocrats get their way. But there is always, in extremeis, the alternative of decamping entirely to the US.
Still, the pushback against Brussels is building, for many reasons, all over Europe. The EU may well join Russia and the PRC in the dustbin of history quite soon. Euro NewSpace would be only one of countless groups to benefit from its fall.
The most humorous part of this is, of course, the belief that the EU can regulate space activities of non-EU countries — specifically the US. That’s the end-game here; anything to slow down SpaceX.
Trying to do with the pen, what they could not do with the sword. The pen has the better reputation, but it is well to keep a sharp sword, handy.
If it’s an attempt to hobble SpaceX, it’s laughable.
I don’t think there are any European NewSpace Entrepreneurs….not really.
It isn’t in their blood.
Once again, Ivan is their sole focus of attention
NATO should have been disbanded in the early 1990s. You call someone a villain long enough–then that is what he will be.
A sword that is dulled, blunt, and rusted from long years of inaction leaves the pen with little gravity to back up it’s missives. Europe is committing slow suicide, with the left dragging the expiring carcass along to the pyre.
Alas…
Jeff Wright,
There are European NewSpace entrepreneurs, they’re just a lot scarcer than their US counterparts – something true of entrepreneurs generally in the EU. You are correct that European blood runs comparatively rather thin in that respect. Additional bureaucratic hoops to jump through will not have a good effect. It never does.
One could certainly wish “Ivan” was top-of-mind in Europe. Thus far that only seems true of those parts of Europe that were formerly provinces of the USSR or member states of the Warsaw Pact. No big surprise there.
The main reason NATO was not disbanded after the fall of the USSR was precisely because all of its former imperial demesnes that had just broken free wanted to join ASAP. No big surprise there either.
And those NATO newbies were wise to join up. Despite a bit of harassment around the edges, Russia has, thus far, declined to do anything unambiguously aggressive on NATO soil.
I don’t see NATO dissolving at least until Ukraine has solved the Russia problem for the rest of Europe – with some help from its friends. After that, NATO might well last as a strictly European – and Canadian – institution with no further US participation.
Or, whomever follows Trump into the White House might decide he liked Europe better when it wasn’t quite so uppity and stick around to try keeping a lid on certain things. That would likely be advisable if the EU comes apart as I expect it to.
As for Russia, I’m afraid Russians have been both acquisitive and aggressive for their entire millennium of existence. They aren’t that way because people call them names, they get called names – accurately – because they are that way.
The only real cure is their extinction. After the Ukes knock them down sufficiently far, I expect some of their former subjects to organize a vigilance committee with exactly that in mind and then go pay them a final visit. I shall wave the banners of all thus involved and cheer them on lustily from the sidelines.
“Or, whomever follows Trump into the White House . . . ”
I am confused. From the widely reported mass demonstrations, I had thought Trump was a King. Oppressing the populace by suppressing the popular vote, leaving The People without recourse or plan-of-succession. Why, you’d think there was a coordinated effort in Government to encourage groupthink, and discourage participation of those not in the Tribe. The demonstrations against Barack Obama and Joe Biden, demonstrated that all will be held accountable. Wait, what? Oh, never mind.
“The main reason NATO was not disbanded after the fall of the USSR was precisely because all of its former imperial demesnes that had just broken free wanted to join ASAP. No big surprise there either.”
Then again, though, the first former Warsaw Pact nations to join NATO didn’t get accepted until 1999 …
I think a lot of NATO’s survival was, mundanely, inertia
But there was a concrete factor at work we now know about which was that British and French leaders were a lot more uncomfortable with German reunification than they let on in public. Keeping NATO alive and keeping all of Germany in NATO seemed like a safeguard that would reduce everyone’s unease.
That it might prove useful again as a curb against Russian revanchism under some future regime was not a *top* factor, I think, given just how grim the state of Russia was in 1991-93, but the worry did occur to some western thinkers . . . there’s a paper trail of that, too. And a few movies.
(I should add that I lived in Poland for a couple spells, and it was absolutely the case that it was always a big fear for Poles across the political spectrum, and I heard about *that* at length. The Poles are often accused of paranoia, but they can say with some justification that they have good history behind that paranoia . . . But I don’t think Polish fears were very salient in Washington, London, or Paris in the early 90’s, when Boris Yeltsin was still giving off good vibes and Russia looked more likely to come apart than send little green men across your borders.)
I do not know of everyone understands this:
Every contract, every business and political consideration in space or otherwise in the EU and within the Democrat party within America are guided, constrained and shaped by the fulfilling through force, if necessary, of U.N. Agenda 2030.
This IMO is the lens that EVERYTHING these operatives in the world think, say and do must be seen through if you actually want to understand them and not remain in a state of constant confusion to the point that then you no longer have a coherent direction.
And when a political ideology exists in the world that insists their interpretation of what they demand reality be without understanding that those who oppose them and seek to dominate them and their “moralistic” ideology (Think LeeS) must in the end be dominated.
This is the world that the Left and the “progressive” exists in and is attempting to give birth to.
And they intend to drag everyone else down to their dark, incompetent level so all who are dominated by their superiors are equal. Equally ignorant, equally poor, equally dominated and miserable. The ultimate control.
First there must be civilization.
And whomever is able to establish and define what that civilization is wins.
I choose MY interpretation of what civilization is and not the Democrat, the Socialist, the Communist and the radical Islamists interpretation of what civilization is.
Agenda 2030 has the same problem ESA does…it isn’t as if they magically get super-competent at world domination after failing everywhere else.
The French are happy running Fifa and the Olympics.
Oh…Chuck Schumer wants Fifa to pay out the vuvuzela for using public transportation (snicker).
I guess that’s better than sports fans convincing cities to pay for domed stadiums.
Agenda 2030 is their road map and aspirational moralistic guide that can justify ANYTHING.
(You know they are much more moral than you or I and are much more qualified to direct what we should and should not be thinking saying or doing)
It is all there, every insane aspiration seeking “Equity” in everything for all, every “moralistic” justification to ramp up government authoritarian control and force are all contained within.
You will obey.
To Contour
What happened with the USN not knowing how to blockade?
I wouldn’t think WSJ is as bad as WAPO, but they said 20 something ships got by…”pulled over” later or what?
Fluid situation. Sort out and find what works and do that.
The radical Iranians in power right now will NEVER bend and fully surrender, and so there is going to have to be more pain IMO.
It is a waiting game for them hoping that Trump will succumb to political pressure before the midterms.
They must be strangled for supplies and cash flow.
Either that or boots on the ground.
And given the choices it is going to be strangulation.
Richard M,
Inertia was certainly a factor in NATO’s continuance beyond the Soviet collapse. It’s a factor in pretty much everything the government does. Government entities always have a continuity bias.
The reason it took a few years before new NATO members started being accepted was mainly caution on the part of older members. They, not unreasonably, wanted to see what newly free former Soviet entities did with their new independence. But NATO’s “waiting room” was full pretty much from 1990-91 onward.
Anent the Poles one can only recall the old saying that one is not paranoid if “they” are really out to get you. Poland had – and still has – more, and older, reasons to fear Russia than most other nations – all of them good.
Cotour,
U.N. Agenda 2030 certainly coincides with the recent leftist push for power everywhere in the West, but it was promulgated in 2015 and was supposed to be largely a fait accompli by now. That hasn’t happened because the project has run into serious pushback, especially here in the US. Key aspects are also getting pushback in Europe – especially the migration stuff.
The price of Liberty is always Eternal Vigilance. U.N. Agenda 2030 is just one more in a near infinitude of lefty plans for world domination cranked out since Karl Marx. It is certainly a danger, but hardly a unique one. And the left are far from having everything their own way. They’ve had a lot of reverses lately and more seem to be in prospect.
DE: What makes today a bit different than any aspirations from 2015 or before is the level of now clear to see Leftist media participation and the level of amore seamless technology and Social media that fills in the voids of the half educated and mindless people of previous years.
And those elements bring the radical Left closer to their utopian Communistic authoritarian paradigm shifting dreams.
Especially the Democrat Socialists within America who are detecting real traction that ride rough shod over the Democrat party today as they see more and more of their candidates politically empowered. U.N. Agenda 2030 flows throughout their efforts, verbiage and philosophy from where I sit.
“Multiculturalism and D.E.I.” flow throughout and direct every agenda element.
And that is the road to “Utopian” hell as you, me and many others unquestionably understand.
And key to that agenda?
Destroy and or gut the “Patriarchic” American Constitution as formulated is an unnegotiable requirement.
Related to my point:
“And Mr. Bannon speaks about the tech company ANTHROPIC who pulled their A.I. product called MYTHOS which they deemed too dangerous to release to the public. The MYTHOS program is apparently so powerful that those who would use it would be able to essentially see through and manipulate all other cyber security programs as I understand it. See the video below for a general overview and assessment of the ANTHROPIC / MYTHOS issue by a computer engineer.”
More: https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/steve-bannon-is-controversial-correct-on-these-issues
Are You Paying Attention Yet America? JGL all rights reserved 4/20/26
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e691e8_31343c7a2329414d85adad0f84186bdf~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_925,h_925,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/e691e8_31343c7a2329414d85adad0f84186bdf~mv2.jpg
And I continue on this theme:
I NEED HELP! AMERICAN FEMINIST PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME
“I really need help on this one. Can an American Liberal or “progressive” Democrat, Democrat Socialist please explain where this conversation about the actual counter intuitive counter rational effects that have become manifest as a result of Feminism in the West and specifically America? ”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/i-need-help-american-feminist-please-explain-this-to-me
Feminism, multiculturalism and “Equity”, everything proposed in the politics of the Left and the “progressive” Democrats in America now pose the greatest threat to women.
Are You Paying Attention Yet America? JGL all rights reserved 4/23/26