Czech Republic becomes first post-communist state to join European Space Agency

The Czech Republic is set to join the European Space Agency, after its council approved Czech membership this week. Once that is ratified by the Czech Parliament, the country will become the first post-communist state to join the prestigious space research institution. But what will membership mean for the Czech Republic? That’s a question Radio Prague put to the director of Czech Space Office Jan Kolář.

Jan Kolář

“The Czech Republic has already widely cooperated not only with ESA but with other spacefaring countries. But being a full and official member of the European Space Agency, which is a quite high-level technological institute in Europe, will have consequence for the public and for politicians. We hope that the ESA membership will make our space-related activities sustainable, which has previously not always been the case. It also means that the volume of these activities will substantially increase. But one thing is the opportunities; the other is how these opportunities will be used by our industry and research.”

The Czech Republic has had a long tradition in space research. Czechoslovakia became the third spacefaring country after the super-powers. Why has it taken ESA so long to approve the Czech membership?

“It’s true that former Czechoslovakia reached a high level of space research and even industry. After the political changes [of 1989], however, space was not at the top of the list of priorities of the new government. Some of the expert teams, that were very good at that time, simply disappeared. So in this field, the Czech Republic started not from scratch but from did start anew from a very low level. That’s why the first official contact with the European Space Agency only happened in 1996.”

Do you think that the Czech membership in ESA might help in the campaign of the Czech Republic to become the seat of the Galileo Agency?

“Definitely. The decision of our government to pursuit the ESA membership was in fact motivated by the fact that the Czech Republic is one of the candidates to host the Galileo Agency. Becoming a member of the European Space Agency means the Czech Republic is becoming a member of club of countries, as well as industrial institutes and companies, which can share knowledge that is sometimes not directly classified but perhaps sensitive. We can now share this kind of information with other member states.”