Throughout 2025, our special focus is on the creation of ESA, fifty years ago. This month, with spring days and travel plans on our minds, we are adopting a light-hearted approach and going on a trip from the north to the south of Europe. On the way, dipping into some of the country-level chapters in the construction of ESA and the national influencers who helped make it happen.
Northern lights
We begin in Europe’s northern frontier, on the border between Denmark and Sweden. Both countries had delegates who played in important part in the prehistory of ESA (during the ESRO years) and in its beginnings.
From Denmark, Henrik Grage was something of a super-delegate, representing his country on European research organisations including CERN, COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) and Eureka, in addition to his involvement with ESA, on various committees and delegate bodies and as Chairman of the ESA Council from 1987-1991. In fact, Grage was Danish delegate to ESRO Council and subsequently ESA Council from 1975 to 2008, probably making him the Agency’s longest serving delegate.
His Swedish counterpart, Bengt Hultqvist, was the first Director of the Kiruna Geophysical Observatory. Hultqvist’s proposal of Kiruna as a base for a sounding rocket range led to his participation in the preparatory commission COPERS’ Scientific and Technical Working Group, which resulted in the Blue Book programme for ESRO. (ESRANGE, ESRO's rocket launching site at Kiruna, was inaugurated in 1966). He became Swedish delegate to the ESRO Council from 1964 to 1972 and continued as chairman or member of many other ESRO and ESA committees until his retirement.
The Brussels trio – Belgian Ministers
Our next stop is in the political heart of Europe - Brussels. In a previous article, we touched on some of the Brussels venues that hosted the final European Space Conferences of the early 1970s which laid the foundation of ESA. This time, our spotlight is on the three Belgian Ministers of Scientific Policy who chaired these conferences and provided the much-needed political will for their success: Théo Lefèvre, Charles Hanin and Gaston Geens.
Each of them served their successive terms as Belgian Minister of Science Policy during the 1970s and each chaired one of the last three ESC meetings (Geens as Secretary of State for scientific policy; he became Minister in 1976).
Lefèvre was in the chair for the fifth ESC in December 1972, which resulted in an agreement in principle in favour of a single space agency, and in the principle of integrating national space programmes at European level. Fellow Belgian Delegation member Alain Stenmans attributed its achievement in forging a European space policy to the persistence of Lefèvre.
Hanin chaired the two fraught sessions of the sixth ESC, in July 1973. Its marathon final session went on from 10am until 5am on the following morning and included meetings between Hanin and individual delegations to break deadlock in the negotiations. His efforts resulted in agreement on a new basis for European space activities and the decision that ELDO and ESRO would be merged and ESA set up.
On 15 April 1975, the last ESC meeting was chaired by Gaston Geens. In a culmination of the combined work of the trio, the meeting adopted the text of the ESA Convention and nominated Roy Gibson as its Director General.
Peter Pan with a Swiss passport
Switzerland might not be one of the countries traditionally associated with space, but its national Peter Creola was a true advocate of space (his own words), raising the profile of his country and directing his energies and enthusiasm for space to the benefit of European cooperation. Lawyer, civil servant, delegate, and committee member, he took on many key roles during a long career.
While his split shift as Swiss delegate (from 1971 to 1980 and 1988-2002) was shorter than Grage’s term, he reputedly held the record as the longest serving Council member in the history of ESRO and ESA, with stints as Chairman of many committees and boards, from the Administration and Finance Committee and the Legal Working Group on the ESA Convention to the Ariane Programme Board. It was ESA’s first Director General, Roy Gibson, who dubbed him the Peter Pan of space!
All roads lead to Rome, but via Paris
If Brussels was the place where ESA took form, Paris was where it became real – the ESA Convention was adopted by the ESC in Brussels, but signed in Paris. As we detailed in an article last December, the ceremony of signing took place on 30 May 1975 as part of the Conference of Plenipotentiaries. The conference was hosted by the French government and was formally opened by the head of the French delegation, politician Michel d'Ornano, the French Minister of Industry and Research. (D’ornano had also headed the delegation at the last ESC). And the following day, ESA began operations.
Having opened its new Paris Headquarters in rue Mario Nikis in autumn 1976, it was perhaps natural that the first ESA Council meeting at Ministerial level was held there. The meeting took place in February 1977, and on this occasion it was chaired by the Italian delegate and Minister of Scientific and Technological Research, Mario Pedini. Pedini was also a veteran delegate, of both the third ESC in 1968, when he was Assistant Secretary for Scientific Research, of the final ESC as Minister, alongside his French colleague d’Ornano, and at the Conference of Plenipotentiaries where he signed the ESA Convention for Italy. He had also represented the Italian government at the 1968 inauguration of ESRIN.
The election of an Italian chairman prefigures the eventual choice of venue for the next ESA Ministerial, which convened in Rome in January 1985. But it took another eight years to get there and so that is a story to be continued another time!
Further reading
We hope this inspires you to take a closer look at the personalities above, at this period in your national history, and at your country’s contribution to the foundations of ESA:
- The ESA History Study Reports series includes a set of national histories of space
- Interviews with Peter Creola and Henrik Grage conducted for the Oral History of Europe in Space project.
