With the Head in the Air and the Feet on the Ground: The EU's Actorness in International Space Governance

Starting with the assumption that the European Union has increasingly tended to present its major space achievements as a substantial contribution to a larger and more ambitious project of construction and legitimization of a political actor (common foreign and security policy/European security and defense policy), this study deals with the EU's international actorness regarding global space governance. Different criteria (authority, autonomy, and coherence) have been selected in order to measure the level of international actorness in a given sector. This original grid of analysis has been systematically tested on the EU in order to conclude if the EU is an actor in the space field or if it is simply present in the field.