ESA’s record budget and new “European Resilience from Space” programme mark a quiet but profound shift in how Europe thinks about space, security and industrial power.
On 26–27 November 2025, European ministers meeting in Bremen approved the largest budget in the European Space Agency’s 50-year history: €22.1bn for the next three years, up from €16.9bn in the 2023–25 period. For once, member states almost fully matched what ESA had asked for – something insiders cannot remember happening before.
Money alone would be newsworthy. But what makes this ministerial different is where some of that money is going.
