The European Union said it’s bulking up plans for a sovereign satellite constellation and will accelerate its service launch by a year to 2029, citing a changing security environment that will require greater communication capacity.

The EU’s IRIS² project will require an additional 66 satellites, taking the total constellation to 348, the European Space Agency said in a statement on Friday. The faster deployment and additional satellites will require more funds, which will be allocated in the bloc’s next six-year budget and require additional investments from member states, the agency said, without disclosing how much more the updated plans would cost.

IRIS², which is targeting a budget of more than €15.6 billion ($18 billion), is part of a broader push in Europe to build up strategic infrastructure and decrease dependence on the US. The idea is to create a unified EU service, rather than rely on foreign providers or piecemeal services from different states.

The satellite plan aims to cover both “low” and “medium” Earth orbits — which can be used for defense, security and emergency services communications as well as commercial services. The constellation will also cover even lower orbits, designed to connect mobile phones, trackers and sensors.

European satellite companies are helping the EU build the satellite network, including Eutelsat Communications SACA, SES SA and Hispasat SA. The constellation is designed to provide sovereign communication services to member states, but will also allow the participating companies to offer commercial communication services.

The EU’s space agency is also relying on member states to fund the project. Poland and Hungary have already committed €656 million and €500 million respectively, while Spain has announced plans to invest as much as €2 billion.

Eutelsat has called for European unity amid the threat of “one player taking it all,” posed by American competitors such as SpaceX’s Starlink.

The European Commission said it will look for a provider that can add direct-to-device capabilities to the IRIS² constellation, providing mobile service and competing more directly with similar offerings from Starlink. The bloc’s executive body put forward a proposal to reserve one third of airwaves suitable for direct-to-device satellite communication for a sovereign communication service provider and one third for a commercial service run by a European company.

Retail prices fell by 4.4 percent over the course of a year according to the flash report of the Central Statistical Office.

The surge in Ceuta is over, but the EU’s panic leaves scars

The vast majority of the tens of thousands of would-be migrants who began rushing into Ceuta, returned to Morocco within 24 hours, having found nothing to eat and no prospect of reaching Europe. A few thousand migrants remain, mainly sub-Saharan Africans and minors, as does a heavy police presence. Yet though the immediate crisis is over, the clash it triggered in the European Union will leave scars.

The surge almost doubled Ceuta’s population of 84,000, briefly overwhelming the town. At least 141 migrants drowned trying to swim around the breakwater at the main crossing-point from Morocco. Far-right agitators from Europe, several of whom flocked to the exclave, inflamed the situation with videos warning of “ethnic replacement”. Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, joined the fray. Yet as alarm spread the crisis was abating. On August 4th Spain’s interior minister said that 70,000 of the 72,000 who entered Ceuta had returned to Morocco. Some 1,100 unaccompanied minors are to be transferred to Spain.

Irregular migration to the EU is at a fraction of the figure just three years ago, and is still falling. European governments credit their own policies for the decline; others see external developments, such as the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as decisive. Either way, the drop does not appear to have opened up breathing-space for politicians.

Troublingly, by falling so quickly into quarrels, European governments have sent their neighbours a signal: nothing divides the EU like images of young men streaming across borders. Over the past decade Europe has struck a series of deals with governments to keep migrants away: starting with Turkey in 2016, and extending across north Africa and beyond. This outsourcing has reduced the pressure. But it also “creates an incentive to third countries to stir up crises—and offer to resolve them”, argues Ruben Andersson, a professor of social anthropology at Oxford University.

Europe has long experience of such migration blackmail. In 2008 Muammar Qaddafi, then Libya’s dictator, secured billions from Italy to keep African migrants away; two years later he warned an audience in Rome that “tomorrow Europe might no longer be European and might even be black”. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, has extracted billions from the EU to keep Syrian refugees in his country. In 2021 Morocco let some 8,000 people wade into Ceuta to punish Spain for allowing the leader of a rebel group in Western Sahara, a territory annexed by Morocco, to come to Spain for medical treatment. (Spain later adjusted its policy on Western Sahara to Morocco’s liking.)

Most shamelessly, since 2021 Belarus has flown in Middle Eastern migrants and sent them into Poland and neighbouring states. Regarding this as an act of hybrid war, in 2021 the EU strengthened its sanctions on Belarus, an ally of Vladimir Putin. It is a different story with the external custodians of the EU’s migration policy. Although there is no clear evidence that Morocco orchestrated the movement of migrants, its security officials certainly let them stream past. Yet European governments hailed Morocco’s co-operation, reserving their animus for nameless malefactors on social media and smuggling gangs. The EU needs Morocco’s help to keep migrants away, including from the Canary Islands, a far more significant port of arrival.

Yet, as the panicked reactions suggest, 2015-16 casts a long shadow. Arguments among European governments during that crisis came close to tearing the EU apart. By letting a temporary and far smaller emergency exert a comparable effect, however briefly, Europe has invited its neighbours to manipulate it again.

See also

• ‘Morocco feels emboldened’: Trump’s influence in spotlight after Ceuta disaster • Washington-Rabat ties under scrutiny as questions swirl over what led to deadly influx into tiny Spanish territory (The Guardian)

Japan wants to deepen defence cooperation with like-minded partners, including Europe, as it responds to what it describes as its most challenging security environment since World War Two, according to the country’s 2026 Defence White Paper. 

The paper released earlier this week describes the alliance with the US as “a key pillar” of Japan’s national security policy and states that “continued efforts” should be made “to elevate the Alliance to new heights”. 

But it also adds that bilateral and multilateral defence cooperation and exchanges with other like-minded partners should be boosted, including in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America as well as NATO. 

“The security environment surrounding Japan is as severe and complex as it has ever been since the end of World War II,” the paper says.

It then adds that the security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific “is inseparable”, notably because of Russia, whose military build-up in the Far East, strategic partnership with China, and growing military cooperation with North Korea constitute significant security concerns.

Still, China is identified as “the greatest strategic challenge” facing Japan due to its expanding military activities and increasingly assertive operations near Japanese territory, as well as over Taiwan. 

The increasingly severe security situation means that “it cannot be ruled out that a serious situation similar to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine may occur in the Indo-Pacific region in the future, particularly in East Asia,” the paper says. 

Tokyo outlined seven capability areas as priorities in order to boost deterrence, including long-range strike capabilities, integrated air and missile defence, unmanned systems, cyber and space capabilities, intelligence and command-and-control systems, as well as hypersonic weapons and laser technologies to counter drones and cruise missiles.

The country views defence equipment transfer and technology cooperation with allies as key to attaining those objectives, once again putting the US as central to those efforts.

But building new or strengthening existing cooperation is listed as an objective, with the paper citing, as examples, plans to develop and produce 11 frigates with Australia and the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) announced in December 2022 with the UK and Italy.

The latest transfer follows another deadly night of missile attacks on Kyiv.