CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales) is the French space agency, though calling it an “agency” is misleading. It is less NASA and more an industrial directorate, a tool for Paris to funnel money into French primes while pretending it’s all about exploration and science. CNES exists to make sure Ariane remains “European,” French contractors stay fed, and no one in Toulouse ever has to worry about unemployment. Science is the window dressing, policy is the substance.

Its fingerprints are everywhere. Ariane launchers? CNES is the architect, always making sure the design headquarters stay in France and the contracts flow through ArianeGroup. Earth observation? CNES runs the show, both through Copernicus contributions and French military programs like Helios and CSO.

Human spaceflight? Irrelevant. CNES has no real astronaut corps of its own, just occasional payload specialists seconded to ESA, and a long tradition of insisting Europe doesn’t need to “duplicate” NASA while quietly lobbying for French engineers to build NASA hardware.

The real mission is industrial strategy. Every ESA program that touches launchers, telecom, or EO satellites ends up being shaped by CNES’s priorities. They are the political muscle inside ESA council meetings, ensuring French primes take the lion’s share of workshare. They are also the reason Ariane 6 exists in its current, obsolete form: CNES insisted Europe needed an expendable Falcon 9 knockoff, then spent a decade steering the design into a political jobs program. By the time it flew, the commercial market had moved on. France still got the contracts, so from CNES’s perspective the mission was accomplished.

Science is tolerated as long as it doesn’t get in the way. Rosetta, Mars missions, climate satellites, all technically competent, all overshadowed by the fact that CNES doesn’t exist to do science. It exists to defend French industrial dominance in Europe. That’s why CNES is both indispensable and resented inside ESA. Other member states know France will block anything that threatens its launcher or satellite turf. They also know without CNES, ESA would never get anything off the ground.

So CNES is not Europe’s NASA. It is Europe’s most effective lobbyist in space agency clothing. It can build brilliant hardware, but its real product is power: power to steer ESA’s agenda, power to guarantee contracts for ArianeGroup and Thales, and power to keep France in the driver’s seat of Europe’s “independent access to space.” If you want a science program, call ESA. If you want an industrial policy dressed up as science, call CNES.