The ESA Council of Ministers meets this week in Seville to approve the programme plans of ESA and especially the budget allocations. EARSC has issued a statement supporting the ESA proposals and especially those linked to Future EO, Copernicus 4.0, In-cubed+ and for Global Development Assistance. These are all very important for our sector.

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The EO services sector is crucial to delivering these returns. This is illustrated through 2 studies which EARSC has conducted and is conducting. The first looks at the European EO Services industry sector through our biennial survey of the industry. The industry comprises over 515 companies throughout Europe, with 8,400 employees delivering over €1.2b of revenue. The sector is growing at a rate of 10% per annum. The report is available on our web-site.

In this we find that the government sector makes up 65% of the revenue base for the sector. Of this 15% is for R&D actions and 50% represents government buying services to meet its own needs. Now maybe up to half of the R&D spend will also be in support for meeting government needs so we can safely say that more than 50% of the market is to meet government geospatial needs – ie government as a user. It also means that government provides around 10% of the total sector revenue as a sponsor for the sector. It is highly important to clearly distinguish these two roles.

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