Eurospace Position Paper “Ensuring the short and long-term financial sustainability of Copernicus“

Joint endeavour from Eurospace, SME4SPACE, EARSC and Nereus, the Position Paper “Ensuring the short and long-term financial sustainability of Copernicus”, available here, aims at alerting our institutional counterparts of major uncertainties for the nominal continuity of the Copernicus Programme, direct consequence of a 721M€ funding gap.

If it jeopardises Copernicus’ capability to be the unfailing ally to the European Union’s ambitions to be the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, from an industrial perspective, the funding gap will endanger the continuity of the observation of the Sentinels and the nominal execution of the Sentinels Expansions missions, resulting in a stop of activities at system level that will have several dramatic impacts both for the upstream and the downstream European space sector (e.g., risks in data/services continuity, loss of contracts in the commercial export market, loss of skills and competences).