BRUSSELS, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) should continue to invest in space in order to strengthen its position in the area, according to participants at the tenth Conference on European Space Policy that concluded on Wednesday.
During the two-day event, European institutional decision-makers, CEOs from industry and representatives of academia and civil society discussed the development of a European Space Strategy and the 2019 Roadmap of the European Space Agency (ESA) in order to better serve the EU citizens, society and economy, as part of the bloc's priorities.
ESA and European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen) signed the Administrative Arrangement, concerning the establishment of their Cooperation.
Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission said in her speech that the EU has the second biggest budget in the world for space and will continue to invest in this regard.
The cooperation between ESA and SatCen on earth observation is important for natural disasters within the bloc and globally, she added.
The EU already has Copernicus and Galileo programs and now hopes to take Copernicus to the next level, strengthening europe's security system, monitoring the green gas emissions, and enabling all the new startups to access and use space data.
Elzbieta Bienkowska, European Commissioner in charge of Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs said that the priorities are to make sure Copernicus images will be easily available to anyone, to expand Copernicus and Galileo to new areas, like climate change worldwide, security and defence, to develop and design European level launching strategy space, and to link security and defence in space.
Participants shared opinions about the important role space plays in security and defence. Mogherini and Johann-Dietrich Worner, Director-General of ESA both said that space is important to security and defence sectors of EU.
Notably, Jean-Loic Galle, President of Eurospace said that the EU should launch ambitious space program to compete with the United States and China, for the U.S. and China fully understand the future worldwide leadership of security and defence comes from space.
The Copernicus Earth observation program provides Earth observation data and information, while the Galileo satellite navigation program provides positioning, navigation, and timing information worldwide. The EU's Horizon 2020 program also focuses on research into space technologies, applications, and other space related topics.
