All countries have a vested interest in preserving security and stability in orbit; however, the current geopolitical context leads to incompatible positions that challenge any agreement at the international level. While multiplication of new initiatives following the OEWG suggests shared concerns, it also risks diluting efforts and further dividing the space security community.
In the past decades, threats towards space systems have been growing due to an increasingly tense international environment and capability development in major spacefaring nations. Consequently, space security issues have been at the forefront of the space agenda in the past years, and several mechanisms and fora have been set up to address them in the framework of the United Nations.
The latest occurrence of these exchanges is the Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats through Norms, Rules and Principles of Responsible Behaviours (OEWG), which met for a total of four sessions in 2022 and 2023. The OEWG promoted a new approach to space security, aiming at identifying nefarious behaviours rather than being focused on technologies. Eventually, due to well-entrenched opposition between two blocks (mostly Western states on the one hand, and China/Russia on the other), no consensus was reached and, therefore, no official outcome was produced by the OEWG. However, draft recommendations were circulated.
In this context, the report aims to:
- Identify lessons from past space security efforts conducted at the international level.
- Analyse the recommendations sketched by the OEWG.
- Introduce the mechanisms already planned to tackle space security and outline considerations for the future European approach.
