(Adnkronos) – Italy should exploit its expertise in the space sector and put it at the heart of domestic and European policy, harnessing its potential to boost the competitiveness of industry and agriculture and its applications for security, the fight against climate change and other areas, foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Monday.
“The importance of the space sector to industry has not yet been fully understood,” Tajani told the second edition of the Space Economy States General taking place in Rome, Turin and Milan through Friday.
“And Italy has considerable know-how in the sector,” he said in an address to the event’s opening session ‘Space Diplomacy: a Foreign Policy Instrument and Driver of Growth’.
Most of the satellites of Europe’s major Galileo project involving international scientific research on extraterrestrial intelligence or technology “are the fruit of Italian scientific knowledge,” Tajani said.
“Italy does not only have big companies: the landscape also contains many small and medium-sized enterprises which allow us to create numerous opportunities for our country,” he said.
We also have to keep bringing our knowledge to Europe, including the European Commission. We cannot fail to play a role in Italian-European industrial policy that focuses on space…there is more that we can do,” Tajani continued.
At the Space Economy States General, Italy needs to promote the sector, “which is certainly a non-polluting industrial sector,” Tajani underlined.
At strategic level, “I believe we must determine how much the space sector can aid industrial and agricultural competitiveness, and also civil protection and air traffic… there are so many applications that need to be linked to the development of the space industry,” Tajani underlined.
Another key area is the space industry’s contribution to European security and the fight against climate change, Tajani noted.
The foreign ministry is involved in the governance of the Italian space agency (ASI) and also in reforms that will enter into force in January that will incorporate space into economic growth policy, Tajani concluded.
The opening session will feature a roundtable discussion on cooperation in space and aerospace, focusing on the objectives of space diplomacy and Italy’s international partnerships, said a foreign ministry statement.
The event will be moderated by General Franco Federici, military advisor to Italy’s prime minister and secretary of COMINT (Inter-Ministerial Committee for Space Policies), and Marco Lisi, the foreign ministry’s special envoy for Space.
The Space Economy States General brings together institutional stakeholders, industrial and business representatives from the space and defence sectors, as well from the financial world, universities and research bodies. This year’s meeting revolves around three events dedicated to the challenges of diplomacy, technological innovation, and sustainability, according to the foreign ministry statement.
The meeting comes at an especially important time for the space sector, following the recent adoption of the first Italian space law and while work is underway at the European level on an EU Space Act, the statement noted.
Next month, a European Space Agency ministerial meeting held under the Italian presidency will define Europe’s goals for the next three years, “amid profound changes in the space industry and challenges around the growing connections between space and defence,” the statement continued.
Italy is a prominent player internationally and multilaterally and will have a key role at the United Nations with its 2026-2027 Presidency of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) – the only global forum for the definition of common rules, the statement added.
