Opening address by Commissioner Kubilius at the 2nd Access to Space Conference "Ready to Launch: Building Europe's Competitive, Resilient and Responsive Access to Space"

I am glad to be here with you to discuss our European access to space, the most decisive issue for our future in space today.

What a symbolic place we have here today! I came to politics from physics. And if you look around and read explanations what this building means for European and global physics, you will see why I am talking about this symbolism. Because more than 100 years ago the Solvay Library was a place for the annual gathering of all bright minds in physics – from Europe, from all over the World: Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and others. And they started a big journey into the unknown world of physics: atoms, quantum and so on.

I hope that our meeting on launching in the Solvay Library has the same symbolism: we are starting a big journey into “known unknown” territories. I hope that this will be the same success story as with the development of physics.

When we are talking about launching, we need to look into history and we will understand very quickly that from the beginning of humanity, transport has been decisive for progress. From ships to railroads to cars and planes.

And today it's rockets. Rockets are the beginning and end of space travel. Alpha and omega. Absolute pre-condition. No rockets – no access to space – no future in space.

We overcame the launcher crisis. But now we face the next, maybe even bigger challenge.

If we don't act, our future in space is at risk.

In the next ten years, an expected 50,000 satellites will be launched into space worldwide. For defence. For the economy. For mega constellations.

At the same time, launching is lagging behind – worldwide.

The result: fierce competition for limited launch opportunities; Huge increase in prices, putting national and European space ambitions at risk.