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Paper short abstract

This proposal examines how the EU's IRIS2 programme sediments European space policy around military security and autonomy. Analysing strategy documents and press releases, it traces how these concepts are prioritised over others, framing space as a securitised frontier of state-private interests.

Paper long abstract

In rising tensions among space-faring geopolitical competitors, the EU has seen a significant increase in military spending and an active push towards militarisation. One of its flagship programmes is IRIS2, a secure government and military communications space infrastructure, composed of a constellation of non-geostationary satellites.

This intervention seeks to research the role of IRIS2 in the ongoing process of militarisation in European political discourse and policy. Thus, it examines how the IRIS2 programme contributes to envisioning space as a securitised frontier, where commons are accumulated for the political and economic advantage of state-private partnerships. Through IRIS2, the EU sediments visions of European sovereignty in space, centering notions of security and autonomy directly related to applications for military activity, favoured over social visions centered on benefitting end users and communities.

To ground its approach, the presentation exposes the result of a mixed methods document analysis of the EU Space Strategy for Security and Defence and several press releases of the Defence Industry Space Programme and of the SpaceRISE consortium. Here, it is possible to trace how those visions are turned into concrete policies and practices that shape the development of the programme. Through frequency analysis, the research traces which values are prioritised in documents and regulations, using a Keyword-in-Context approach to construct text fragments to be further interpreted qualitatively, especially regarding security and autonomy and immediately related concepts. The aim is to understand how the EU relates these concepts to public interest whilst remaining dependent on private technologies and resources.