© Samantha Cristoforetti
© Samantha Cristoforetti

ESA says UK role “will change”

The European Space Agency (ESA) has said that the UK will stay as part of the ESA when it leaves the EU, but will have to renegotiate terms to continue participating in certain projects.

Jean Bruston, head of ESA’s EU policy office, told journalists in Paris, France, that the ESA is autonomous from the European Union and should not be directly affected by Brexit.

20 EU countries, including the UK, belong to the ESA, which gets about a quarter of its budget from the current 28 member bloc.

The other two members are non-EU countries Norway and Switzerland.

Apart from its ESA participation, the UK is also party to several EU-driven space programmes.

These include the Copernicus satellite system to monitor environmental damage and boost disaster relief, and Horizon 2020, which seeks to boost scientific research and innovation.

However, the UK could still contribute to Galileo and Copernicus if it negotiated a third-party agreement with the EU, which is what Norway and Switzerland have done.

As non-EU members, they make project-specific contributions to the EU. The ESA, in turn, can place contracts with companies in those countries.

ESA director-general Jan Woerner told AFP this week “the UK will remain a member state of ESA, this is very clear.

“But of course, as we are also dealing with European programmes like Copernicus and Galileo, and also the question of UK citizens working on the continent and all these legal issues, we have to take it into account.”