A joint mission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister's Office and the Italian Space Agency took place in Stockholm for consultations on space issues with Swedish counterparts.
Italy has been collaborating with Sweden for over ten years in the space sector, a scientific, technological and economic sector that offers great opportunities for both research and industry.
The visit followed the mission of a delegation of the Piedmontese aerospace cluster to Stockholm and Kiruna in November 2024, but above all the meeting between Prime Minister Meloni and Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson in Rome on 26 February, who, in the context of the promising strands of bilateral collaboration to be intensified, pointed in particular to the space sector.
The visit to Stockholm was attended by the Deputy Director General for the Promotion of the Country System, Giuseppe Pastorelli, the Head of the Office for Space and Aerospace Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Antonio Bartoloni, the manager in charge of support activities for the secretariat of the Interministerial Committee for Space and Aerospace Research of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Luigi Riggio, and Danilo Rubini, from the International Affairs Directorate of the Italian Space Agency, responsible for relations between the EU and European countries.
The delegation first met, at the Ministry of Research, Magnus Härviden, Advisor to the Swedish government for space research and policy, and the Swedish space policy managers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Defence. The meeting discussed European space policies and programmes and the prospects for scientific and industrial collaboration, also in relation to the increasingly important national security policies.
Subsequently, the delegation visited the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), the wholly state-owned company that operates the only spaceport in the EU's European territory at Esrange in the far north of Sweden, a research and launch facility that also offers space services for tracking satellites and space missions. The meeting served to better identify opportunities for bilateral collaboration in relation to the scientific and technological challenges of space in Europe and worldwide.
The round of meetings concluded at the Swedish Space Agency (SNSA), where with Director General Ella Carlsson and her staff, the potential for further cooperation both with the ASI and within the activities of the European Space Agency (ESA) was explored.
Ambassador Michele Pala expressed great satisfaction with the success of the meetings with the various Swedish institutions: 'The visit of our delegation was very important, and all the meetings made it possible to identify possible bilateral initiatives, potential collaborations capable of having concrete spin-offs, and synergies in the European political, scientific, and industrial spheres. Space is certainly one of the priority sectors for this office, because it is likely to increasingly characterise the quality of Italian-Swedish relations."
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