30.11.2025

During a meeting of the European Space Agency (ESA), in the German city of Bremen on Thursday, the ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher announced that the agency’s 23 member states will contribute 22.1 billion euro to the ESA during the coming years. Of this over 1.1 billion euro will come from Belgium.

In 2022, at the previous meeting of the ESA’s Council of Ministers, the member states pledged 16.9 billion euros to the Agency. Ahead of this week’s meeting the ESA had warned that Europe risks falling behind in the global space race if its members don’t increase their contributions.

The Federal Science Minister Vanessa Matz (Francophone centrist) has confirmed that Belgium will contribute 1.109 billion euro over the next five years. More than a quarter of Belgium’s contribution will go to programmes aimed at improving space resilience. Funding will be used for the development of secure telecommunications satellites and the further expansion of a robust, independent European navigation system to complement Galileo.

Belgium has also allocated 114 million euro to the design and development of a European launcher and 113 million euros to Earth observation programmes, including the continued development of the European Copernicus satellites. A further 205 million euro will be given to ESA scientific programmes, while 110 million euro will support space exploration.

Quelle: vrt nws