New Decade, Global ambitions: Growth, Climate, Security & Defense
Egmont Palace, Brussels. 21-22. Jan 2020.
Those were some cold and foggy winter days in Brussels. I had been successful to get one of the conference tickets as a freelance aerospace party – actually the overwhelming number of participants were executives from the aerospace industry, EU and ESA officials, government bodies from EU countries and journalists.
I felt like little fish – that’s what I was indeed – swimming happily in the sea between the big aerospace tankers. A few month ago, I had resolved to attend this conference in response to my growing interest in the developments of Space 2.0. I wanted to learn from a close distance about the spirit which makes Europe move in this new field – in friendship, but also autonomous from it’s big brothers: US & Russia.
To make it short, those two days by far exceeded my expectations and I returned home very much inspired from this pan-European experience. Within the first minutes of the conference I noticed that the EU had a particular significance to me: My ability to pick up conversations in number of languages other than English – be it German, French or Spanish – helped a great deal to absorb information and interact with the people around me.
I would considering myself a Tech Nerd and of course I was thrilled from the statements of the big industry players with regard to ongoing or upcoming earth exploration missions, the perspective of a lunar or planetary missions or just “physics brought to service“, i.e. orbital platforms for secure quantum-cryptography servicing the EU. The need for environmental monitoring supporting the analysis of ecological damage or the requirement for secured communication are fundamental political questions that reach far beyond the naked interest in technological competition and economic profit.
At the very end of those two days, I very much enjoyed the speech delivered by EU commissioner Thierry Breton (who had to rush back to Brussels from his encounter with US president Trump, just a few hours ago at the Davos WEF). In fact, Breton, who has a long curriculum with technology companies, convincingly presented the European spirit, while cheerfully switching language between French, a few words of German and English.