Airbus, Leonardo and Thales unite: inside Europe’s push for space autonomy
Europe has long dreamed of rivaling the United States and China in space. Now, three of its biggest industrial names — Airbus, Leonardo and Thales — are taking a bold step to make that happen.
The aerospace and defence giants have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to combine parts of their space operations into a new European venture. Announced on 23 October 2025, the deal aims to strengthen what the companies call Europe’s strategic autonomy in space — the ability to design, build and operate critical satellite and communications systems without relying on foreign suppliers.
“This partnership will help Europe take a decisive step toward greater self-reliance in orbit,” the firms said in a joint statement. “By pooling resources and expertise, the three companies can accelerate innovation and deliver a more competitive European space ecosystem.”
Building a new kind of European space company
Airbus, headquartered in Toulouse, is Europe’s largest aerospace group and already a global leader in commercial satellites. Italy’s Leonardo contributes advanced optics and instruments, while France’s Thales brings deep experience in defence electronics and secure communications.
Each company occupies a vital niche in the continent’s space economy, but until now they have often competed for contracts from the European Space Agency (ESA) and national governments. This partnership seeks to end that fragmentation and create a single industrial powerhouse able to take on fast-moving competitors such as SpaceX, Amazon Kuiper, and China’s expanding state-backed constellations.
Dr Maria Kallistratou, aerospace policy specialist at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), commented to Euractiv: “The move signals a shift from national champions to a coordinated European logic. Instead of fighting over ESA funding, the big players are trying to build scale under one industrial flag.”
From fragmented ambition to strategic autonomy
The notion of strategic autonomy has become central to European industrial policy. It covers not only energy and semiconductors but also the ability to operate securely in orbit.
That ambition grew sharper after the war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s reliance on non-European space assets. When SpaceX’s Starlink became essential to Kyiv’s battlefield communications, European defence planners saw how vulnerable they were. In 2023, French defence minister Sébastien Lecornu told Le Monde that “Europe cannot rely on private actors abroad for capabilities that have become essential to national security.”
The new Airbus-Leonardo-Thales alliance aims to provide that missing resilience — a European-controlled platform for secure connectivity, navigation, and observation.
Making orbit digital
Europe’s space sector excels in engineering but has been slower to embrace digital transformation. U.S. companies now use software-defined satellites that can be reprogrammed in orbit, while reusable rockets have cut launch costs dramatically.
Analyst Laurent Jolivet of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) noted that “European manufacturers have world-class engineering but remain tied to bespoke, one-off builds. The next leap will be digital reconfigurability and platform-based services.”
The three partners already have the tools for that shift. Airbus’s OneSat and Thales Alenia Space’s Inspire platforms are designed for reconfigurable payloads. Combined with Leonardo’s imaging expertise, they could deliver a new generation of adaptive satellites capable of shifting coverage or bandwidth instantly.
Such technology could support a space-as-a-service model, selling data, analytics and secure communications directly to industries like logistics, agriculture, energy and environmental monitoring — and reinforcing Europe’s role in climate data and sustainable innovation.
Bureaucratic holding company or agile innovator?
Analyst Guillaume du Lac of consultancy AeroFutures warned in Les Echos that “the danger is paralysis by committee. If this becomes a bureaucratic holding company rather than an agile innovator, Europe will have consolidated its inefficiencies instead of solving them.”
The partners insist on a lean structure focused on commercial results, but the details will face scrutiny from EU competition authorities in 2026. The test will be whether the joint venture can move faster than the political machinery around it.
A crowded launchpad
Europe’s start-up ecosystem has never been more vibrant. Finnish radar-imaging company ICEYE, valued at over $2.5 billion (Financial Times, Oct 2025), and Germany’s Isar Aerospace are demonstrating how smaller, venture-backed firms can build and launch satellites at a fraction of the traditional cost.
If Airbus, Leonardo and Thales want to lead rather than dominate, analysts say they will need to collaborate with start-ups, opening supply chains and technology platforms to smaller innovators.
“Europe’s strength lies in its ecosystem,” ESPI’s Jolivet told Politico Europe. “If this alliance becomes a platform for SMEs to plug into, it could drive innovation across the board.”
Between consolidation and creativity
The alliance also revives a long-running debate over Europe’s industrial strategy: should it consolidate existing giants or nurture new disruptors?
A 2024 commentary by Bruegel warned that “Europe’s instinct is to merge to survive rather than innovate to lead. Without true digital transformation, consolidation will simply scale the old model.”
Supporters counter that scale is now a prerequisite for innovation. Competing globally requires resources that no single European firm can provide alone — especially in space, where the up-front investment can stretch into the billions.
If the new consortium can pair industrial capacity with software-driven agility, it could become Europe’s answer to the U.S. “prime contractors” that dominate space and defence.
Timing may be Europe’s advantage
The global space economy is entering a new phase of commercialisation and geopolitical tension. As the United States tightens export controls and China expands its state-backed programmes, many smaller nations are seeking partners with technological capability but political neutrality.
A unified European venture could fill that role — offering secure, sustainable and geopolitically neutral infrastructure. Europe already leads in Earth-observation through the Copernicus programme, and Airbus and Thales Alenia supply instruments used in both ESA and NASA missions.
The alliance could leverage that credibility to build an independent European platform for environmental intelligence, providing trusted data for governments and green industries worldwide.
The road ahead
The MoU remains a framework for cooperation rather than a completed merger. Over the next year, the partners will define which business units to combine, how to allocate ownership, and how to handle overlaps. A formal structure is expected in early 2026.
Even at this stage, however, the symbolism is powerful. The Airbus-Leonardo-Thales partnership signals that Europe no longer intends to play catch-up in the space economy — it intends to set its own trajectory.