On 29 June the Council adopted a mandate for negotiations with the European Parliament on the proposal, presented by the Commission in February 2022, for a Regulation establishing the Union secure connectivity programme for the period 2023-2027.
The objective of the programme is to establish a sovereign space-based secure connectivity system for the provision of secure, autonomous, reliable and cost-effective satellite governmental communication services to governmental users supporting the protection of critical infrastructures, surveillance, external actions, crisis management and applications that are critical for the economy, environment, security and defence. At the same time, the Programme intends to enable the provision of commercial services by the private sector to facilitate, among others, further development of worldwide high-speed broadband, and seamless connectivity as well as removing communication dead zones and increasing cohesion across Member States’ territories.
This secure connectivity programme also aims at strengthening the competitiveness of EU industry, including SMEs and start-ups, in the field of satellite communication solutions and services by spearheading innovation to ensure that technological advances and their governmental use act as a driver of innovation and wider commercialisation.
The programme builds primarily upon the GOVSATCOM component of the EU space programme and the EuroQCI, and will take into account synergies with the other components of the EU space programme.
In order to acquire information regarding the current and future capabilities of industry that can provide ideas and potentially different technical and operational solutions, responding to the needs of EU Secure Connectivity Programme, the European Commission is launching a Preliminary Market Consultation.
Taking into account the future governance foreseen in the draft Regulation for the implementation of the programme, the elaboration of this Preliminary Market Consultation has been coordinated with both EUSPA and ESA, and the questions included in the consultation have been designed so that industry’s responses can support their respective activities. ESA in particular will be supporting the EU Secure Connectivity Programme through an own programme to be discussed at the ESA Council meeting at Ministerial Level in November 2022.
Interested parties are invited to provide inputs and ideas by sending contributions requested in the published document within the identified deadline.
NEW: Please be informed that the deadline for the submission of the replies to the preliminary market consultation has been modified. You can download a corrigendum in the following link.