SpaceRISE is Brussels’ latest attempt to prove Europe can do satellites without outsourcing its sovereignty to Elon, Jeff, or whatever Russian supplier hasn’t been sanctioned yet. Officially it’s a “public-private partnership,” which in EU-speak means the Commission pays for most of it while industry pretends it’s a market-driven venture. SES, Eutelsat, and Hispasat are the anchor tenants, flanked by the usual aerospace contractor bingo card: Airbus, Thales, OHB, Orange, Deutsche Telekom, … each promised a slice to keep national capitals quiet.

The job: build and run IRIS², the grandly titled Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite. Translation: a constellation of 290 spacecraft scattered across LEO and MEO that’s supposed to be Europe’s answer to Starlink and to stop governments from having to rent bandwidth from US operators in wartime. The price tag sits north of €10 billion, with Brussels covering about 60 percent. SES is already bragging about double-digit returns, which tells you just how much taxpayer insulation from risk has been baked in.

The rollout schedule, first services by 2030, full system in the early 2030s, basically guarantees another decade of PowerPoints and procurement workshops before anyone sees a working network. ESA is running the technical side, which means lots of engineering credibility but also the usual molasses-slow committee process. In theory, IRIS² is supposed to give the EU autonomy, redundancy, and some token “digital inclusion” veneer to sell to the public. In practice, it’s a geopolitical insurance policy disguised as rural broadband.

SES gets to entrench its MEO franchise, Eutelsat tries to prove its OneWeb marriage wasn’t a drunken mistake, and Hispasat finally gets to look like more than Iberia’s GEO caretaker. The Commission gets to tell itself Europe isn’t falling hopelessly behind in LEO. Everyone gets a subsidy.

If the consortium actually pulls this off, Brussels will have a genuine strategic asset. If not, it’ll be another shiny European “flagship” that takes longer and costs more than anyone admits, while SpaceX keeps eating the commercial market alive.