EU launches government satcom program in sovereignty push | Better HN

EU launches government satcom program in sovereignty push | Better HN

112 comments

wongarsu1mo ago

From the headline I expected some kinds of new communication satellites. But instead this is "just" a marketplace where government entities can purchase services. The satellites were already in orbit and already "EU sovereign", this is about making it easier to use them and centralizing capacity planning

In a way this is the dry run for when IRIS² starts service in another four years or so, the European Starshield equivalent

egorfine1mo ago

I'm sure we'll be able to progress at supersonic speeds with this project once the Environmental Impact Study will be complete.

sajithdilshan1mo ago

I honestly wonder whether the EU can afford to spend on technological sovereignty. With an aging population and the need to maintain welfare states, governments will have to allocate more and more of future budgets to expanding and sustaining welfare programs (statutory health insurance, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc.). That ultimately means higher taxes, a larger government workforce, and a shrinking private sector. Maybe they will have enough money to maintain the existing status quo, but not sure where the additional capital would come from to invest in digital sovereignty.

pjc501mo ago

"EU welfare state" is a meme that doesn't survive looking closely at the actual figures. Especially if you compare things like state pensions properly; the US moves these into a different column labelled "social security", but that doesn't mean they're not part of the state!

Note that the alternative is sending money overseas to rent US infrastructure. It may make a lot of sense to deploy spending locally where it stays in the economy rather than overseas, a standard "import substitution" play.

amarcheschi1mo ago

Plus, us already spends much more on healthcare per capita than other countries https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

pirate7871mo ago

Import substitution has failed consistently as an economic strategy.

celeritascelery1mo ago

While the EU welfare is not that much larger than the US (maybe 5% more of GDP), the US also has much more money, a larger portion of the population working, and higher population growth. They also have the technical and business knowledge in tech that the EU lacks (e.g. silicon, rocketry, hyperscalers, etc).

notahacker1mo ago

Most of the "digital sovereignty" stuff is spending money on companies that intend to sell services at a profit and pay taxes on it. So they absolutely can afford to do it (and governments have more routes to getting money back than just exits) provided you back the right companies. That's probably more easily achieved in digital sovereignty than space launch though.

sajithdilshan1mo ago

You mean government subsidizing the companies and taxing them in return? How is that a viable model? Also subsidizing means tax payers put on the burden and there is no guarantee that the companies subsidized by the governments would turn a profit or just burn through the subsidies and go bankrupt.

alephnerd1mo ago

The EU has the capacity, but will be working closely with other partners like India, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Vietnam, and the UAE as capital and/or technology partners.

For example, Eutelsat - which is providing the backbone for GOVSATCOM and IRIS2 - is a three-way partnership between India's Bharti Group (Sunil Mittal), the French, and the UK. Or GCAP where Japan's Mitsubishi Group is acting as both a technology and capital partner to Italy and the UK.

This was also a major driver behind the EU-India Defense Pact and the EU-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership - both of which were overshadowed by the EU-India FTA.

A multilateral organization like the EU has the muscle to integrate and cooperate with other partners, which is something that shouldn't be underestimated, as this builds resilience via redundancy.

Edit: Interesting how this is the second time [0] in the past few weeks where an HN comment I wrote that was optimistic about the EU's capacity was downvoted. There's a reason the PRC is still conducting industrial espionage on EU institutions [1].

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696996

[1] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2026/01/14/...

Fnoord1mo ago

> Interesting how this is the second time [0] in the past few weeks where an HN comment I wrote that was optimistic about the EU's capacity was downvoted.

Nothing new there, but I wouldn't assume Chinese bot army being behind it. The Russians, American MAGA, European alt-right each have an interest in such suppression (and RU and USA also conduct industrial espionage on EU). You may assume each of these parties is present in a thread about European sovereignty, but either way the mods discourage any discussion about moderation. You're best off emailing one of them.

sajithdilshan1mo ago

But then again it won't be sovereign. EU has been doing the same with US companies and now they are switching US for a different country/countries

baklavaEmperor1mo ago

If trust is the constraint, Israel’s track record makes it an odd choice for EU sovereign systems.

philipwhiuk1mo ago

> With an aging population and the need to maintain welfare states, governments will have to allocate more and more of future budgets to expanding and sustaining welfare programs (statutory health insurance, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc.). That ultimately means higher taxes, a larger government workforce, and a shrinking private sector.

All of this is also true in the US.

alephnerd1mo ago

And China excluding the welfare part - China has an extremely weak welfare system for a state at it's economic level and the Xi admin remains deeply opposed to what it derogatorily terms as "Welfarism" [0].

[0] - http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2021/1116/c40531-32283350.htm...

nradov1mo ago

That's true of all developed countries to a degree, but the USA still has a significantly better demographic profile than the EU.

sajithdilshan1mo ago

Not really, US population would continue to grow, while EU declines[1]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/india-china-europe-...

seydor1mo ago

china has been an invaluable partner. Green energy supplies a large part of energy consumed in europe now, and car electrification has become popular thanks to cheap chinese EVs. I will not be surprised to see chinese drones or weapons too

pjc501mo ago

Chinese drones yes, there's no equivalent of the US DJI ban as far as I'm aware. China have been supplying both sides in the Ukraine war.

Chinese weapons .. no. Plenty of traditional EU arms companies to do that, and this is one area where I'm OK with the traditional EU protectionism.

A more interesting question is the two big countries which are part of NATO, on the European continent, but NOT part of the EU: UK and Turkey.

alephnerd1mo ago

> china has been an invaluable partner

The PRC has stated it will continue to back Russia against Ukraine [0] which is a red line for the EU. Additionally, the PRC has been running disinfo ops against EU member states tech exports [1] while still attempting industrial espionage on European institutions [2].

China will not become a trusted partner of the EU as long as:

1. It continues to conduct industrial espionage against EU institutions

2. Attempts to undermine EU industrial and dual use exports

3. It continues to support Russia diplomatically and materially at the expense of Ukraine

4. It attempts to undermine the EU as an institution [3][4][5][6]

5. It continues to threaten EU nationals through physical [7] and legal [8] intimidation.

It's the same reason trust has reduced in the US as well.

---

[0] - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3316875/ch...

[1] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...

[2] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2026/01/14/...

[3] - https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/_t2515/57/f8/c21257a743416/page.ht...

[4] - https://www.ft.com/content/1ed0b791-a447-48f4-9c38-abbf5f283...

[5] - https://www.ft.com/content/81700fc4-8f23-4bec-87e9-59a83f215...

[6] - https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/ex-mitarbeiter...

[7] - https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/07/02/deux-espio...

[8] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2025/12/23/...

jcfrei1mo ago

Not sure why you are getting downvoted - I'm wondering the same thing. Catching up is inherently more expensive than just maintaining a lead. And on top of that the EU pensioners will oppose any reallocation of resources outside of their retirement / pension schemes. The EU does have more fiscal headroom than the US, ie. lower debt per GDP and lower debt per capita - so through borrowing they could mobilize some more funds. But that's about it and I'm doubtful that's going to be enough.

sajithdilshan1mo ago

I guess a lot of Europeans don't want to see the real logical questioning and downvoting out of pure frustration.

Also EU doesn't have fiscal freedom. Germany is the only country barely keeping it together and without any hard reform France is a ticking time bomb when it come to its debt-to-GDP.

numpad01mo ago

"Arianespace is pathetically behind the times as launch services provider and no one is even cost competitive with SpaceX" types of offhand Internet comments are just literal propaganda with zero substance. [WARN] messages on Linux Kernel consoles bear more importance than those.

derelicta1mo ago

Too little too late, but one can still appreciate the initiative.

buckle80171mo ago

Guy in charge of NATO (who is dutch I think) recently said EU would need to move to spending 10% GDP to plausibly not need the us military.

So this is great and all but it's too little too late.

bluebarbet1mo ago

The declared aim of Nato sec-gen is 5%.

The EU and USA have similar total GDP measured by PPP, and USA spends 3.4%. So 10% would be wildly excessive by any measure. In addition the EU has three times the population of the unstated enemy, Russia.

But it's true that this initiative is happening too late.

kyboren1mo ago

> USA spends 3.4%. So 10% would be wildly excessive by any measure

I see this argument a lot, and I think it's totally bunk.

The point of military spending isn't to sacrifice a certain number of goats at the altar to ensure the gods' favor, it's to acquire the means to enforce a nation's interests. In our highly industrial age, that means all sorts of ships, submarines, aircraft, launchers and spacecraft, armed and armored vehicles, autonomous {air, ground, sea, undersea} platforms, all sorts of munitions, deep magazines, production lines, domestic supply chains, etc. etc. etc.

The US has spent 3% - 5% of its GDP on its military since 1990, and the US still enjoys the benefits of much of that accumulated spending. Five Nimitz-class aircraft carriers were built even before 1990, when the US was spending 5% - 7% of its GDP on its military. The US still operates B-52Hs, which were built in the 1960's. Even beyond ships and airframes, continued funding of programs and capabilities sustains a sort of inertia of know-how and industrial capability that, once stopped, is difficult and costly to get going again.

Just comparing military spending at a snapshot in time isn't a good way to compare military capabilities and potential. If European nations wish to replace what the US brings to the table, it's going to take a crash rearmament program and very high military spending (easily 10%+ of GDP) for a decade or more. And also a unified command structure, unified procurement, and ultimately probably proper federalization. All of which are, unfortunately, pipe dreams.

etyhhgfff1mo ago

Better late than never. They might thank you in 20 years.

moi23881mo ago

He is indeed Dutch. He is also a known liar. Take everything he says with a giant grain of salt, and then some.

Then again, in the current system it makes sense, since there is no EU army, leading to huge overhead for each country.

misja1111mo ago

That's nonsense. The main security threat for the EU is Russia, a state with a GDP roughly equal to Italy's. We only need to keep up our military spending with that.

nradov1mo ago

That's nonsense. Effective deterrence plus protection against WMD requires spending far higher than just parity.

isodev1mo ago

What Mark Rutte has been saying recently is mostly buzzwords for peach daddy's ears (and has been criticises by EU members as it misrepresents our current goals and motivations).

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