EEC 2025: Donald Trump Pushes Poland and Europe Towards Space Independence

- Already at the time of the COVID pandemic , when the global supply chain of advanced electronics and advanced solutions was cut, it suddenly turned out that there were few European solutions in space, which probably woke up the military very much, but above all the European Commission and the European Union, to start thinking about regaining space independence - noted Grzegorz Brona, president of Creotoech Instruments, during the "Space Industry" discussion at the 17th European Economic Congress in Katowice .

Donald Trump gave Europe a cold shower

As he added, the second such clear signal was the outbreak of war in Ukraine , which awakened such thinking more from the military side.

- The third moment of cold shower happened at the beginning of this year, when Trump took power in Washington , it suddenly turned out that this independence, whether in the civilian field, in the crisis field - in such a mix of civilian and military fields, or indeed typically military, is very important and there will be a lot of pressure in the near future to regain this independence - said Grzegorz Brona.

Grzegorz Brona, president of Creotech Instruments (photo: PTWP)

He noted that currently the European Union is trying very hard to take a sensible approach to all programs to regain technological independence , including in the space industry, and Creotech Instruments is in a good position because its actions have, to some extent, forestalled the risk of accidents.

- We are lucky that since 2017, when we started working on satellite systems at Creotech, we immediately decided to completely throw out any modules, subsystems or components from China, we do not have this at all, unlike many European companies. And the second issue, we threw out a significant part of components from the United States, we focused on European or Canadian components - announced the company's president.

He noted that this was not happening at the time due to the Donald Trump administration, which did not seem to threaten transatlantic ties in its first term.

- However, we knew that sooner or later something like this could happen - he added. - Practically all of our solutions are currently based on European subsystems and components .

He noted, however, that cooperation with the United States is still very important. - Americans are the largest space market in the world , we have to be aware of that - concluded Grzegorz Brona.

Financing for the space industry can't get any smaller

How can Poland contribute to building European sovereignty in the space industry? There is still much to be done in terms of better coordination of cooperation between the space business and universities.

- Once again, we should - industry and universities - sit down to discuss how to most effectively use the potential that we have, i.e. talented engineers, talented people, thanks to whom we have a lot of investments, including foreign ones, which drive the economy. We just need to find the golden mean, how to make talented people who are at universities either follow the path of their own development or start effectively looking for work in companies in the space sector - said Paweł Wojtkiewicz, president and co-founder of the Association of Employers of the Space Sector.