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Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies

NEREUS

NEREUS, Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies, is an initiative by regions from all over Europe, which share as Full Members its governance.

Lobbying Activity

Response to EU Space Law: Union law for safe, secure and sustainable space activities

5 Nov 2025

As a European network, NEREUS embraces a harmonised European framework for space activities and a common market for space-based services and products. By reducing legal fragmentation and compliance costs, such a framework could provide greater clarity, predictability, and investment certainty for companies. NEREUS wishes to emphasise that achieving these objectives requires an appropriate balance between regulatory ambition and stakeholder impact, particularly for SMEs and regional ecosystems, ensuring proportionality, transitional measures, and clarity on definitions such as primary provider, as well as coordination of standardisation and e-certification frameworks. Harmonisation must not lead to excessive compliance costs that hinder emerging actors from expanding or competing globally, slow down innovation, or weaken Europes attractiveness to other space powers. The EU Space Package also requires meaningful involvement of regional governments and innovation ecosystems1 as strategic partners in governance and implementation. Regions are essential to translating EU objectives into practical applications, piloting downstream services, and providing feedback to policymakers. Institutionalised regional participation in EU space governance is vital for competitiveness and territorial cohesion: Europe must empower regions as cluster brokers, innovation facilitators, and funding partners, ensuring that regional ecosystems drive entrepreneurship, scale services, and foster inclusive growth. This reflects the crucial role of territories in delivering Europes space ambitions. Accordingly, NEREUS calls for: Explicit recognition of regional governments and their ecosystems as strategic partners in governance, implementation, and innovation, reflected in legislative wording and the Space Team Europe composition. Setting up structured coordination and exchange mechanisms between the Commission, EUSPA and other institutional players and regional networks (NEREUS) on standardisation, data access, and capacity building to avoid duplication and lower compliance costs. Targeted support instruments for SMEs and start-ups, including guidance hubs, testbeds, financial vouchers, and innovation procurement delivered at the local/regional level. Proportionate and phased compliance measures, namely transitional, de-risking, and supportive measures for SMEs and start-ups to ensure harmonisation remains enabling rather than restrictive. Policy tools that stimulate market uptake, including regional innovation programmes, public procurement, pilot deployments, skills development, and cluster support. Integration of space technologies into key EU policy agendas such as the Green Deal, Common Agricultural Policy, and Energy Union to stimulate public demand and market development. A user-centred approach to ensure services address concrete societal and operational needs. All regulatory measures (European and national Law) must be complemented by appropriate funding and capacity building to ensure all territories benefit. Coherent alignment with EU rules to enable regional firms to seize emerging opportunities rather than be left behind. Furthermore, NEREUS emphasises that the European regulatory framework must ensure a level playing field with other global space economies. European companies should not face higher administrative, financial, or legal barriers to space activities than competitors in other economic areas. The goal must be to create a European environment that enables businesses to operate faster, more efficiently and with clearer procedures, thereby strengthening Europes attractiveness for investment, innovation and talent in the space sector.
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Response to European Water Resilience Strategy

3 Mar 2025

Recommendations for a future European Space Strategy as seen from NEREUS A European Water Resilience Strategy should I. Establish a strong vision for fostering innovation and new technologies. In this context, promoting the use of space data and services as a strong tool and facilitator within a European Resilience Water Strategy should be pivotal. The dimension of space is essential for addressing water stress and sustainable water management. (i) governance and implementation; Space-based data contributes to designing evidence-based strategies for water governance and regulation and better-informed decision-making. By monitoring water resources, pollution levels, and the impacts of climate change (see above), satellite data enables the creation of regulations that incentivize sustainable and more efficient water management and the development of green technologies in the water industry. Moreover, it can help set standards for water efficiency, ensuring that industries meet high environmental standards in line with clean, circular economy principles. Overall, Earth Observation/Copernicus data contributes to establish better informed decision-support mechanisms. (ii) infrastructure; (iii) finance and investments; (iv) security; and (v) industry, innovation and education. Earth Observation/SENTINEL data and satellite-based services can contribute to enhancing innovations in the Water Industry, such as predictive models for water management, real-time monitoring systems, and early warning systems for water-related crises. By integrating EO data with other data sources, EU water industries can develop new products and services for water conservation, wastewater treatment, and innovative Water Recycling and Circular Economy Practices. When monitoring industrial water use and wastewater treatment plants, space technologies can support the implementation of circular water management strategies that maximize water reuse and minimize the need for freshwater extraction. Further to this, satellite-based data can support the monitoring of water consumption patterns in agriculture, tourism, industry, and urban areas, identify areas with excessive water use or inefficiencies, and thus contribute to optimize water use. This information enables the development of effective approaches to reduce waste and promote water-wise practices. a.) Specific objective: Restore and protect the broken water cycle The use of space data as a unique source of information and an effective tool to monitor the water cycle may play a crucial role, in particular in connection with: New technologies for precise and global observation from space (Sensors, systems, connectivity including IoT, data management and exploitation); Digital Twins representations as co-creation space, fostering interdisciplinary research and collaboration between scientists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and citizens. Use of Copernicus data as a major source of information for the development of the specific objective. II. Call for concerted actions and partnerships between political decision makers in the water domain at European, national and regional levels to explore the dimension of space to address water challenges. III. Acting together: Set up of strategic partnerships among water and space stakeholders to define a joint vision and roadmap. Establishing structures for reflection and a targeted dialogue between users of water-relevant solutions and service providers, as well as collaborations, development of model initiatives. IV. Launch reflections on how the data-dissemination architecture and mechanisms of Europe could be aligned to better exploit existing data sets with relevance for water issues and and to experiment with new forms of data sharing.
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Meeting with Younous Omarjee (Member of the European Parliament)

25 Oct 2023 · Réseau NEREUS - Copernicus

Meeting with Fabrice Comptour (Cabinet of Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska)

25 Feb 2015 · Introductory meeting

Meeting with Maria Da Graca Carvalho (Cabinet of Commissioner Carlos Moedas)

10 Feb 2015 · NEREUS - Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies