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From its inception, the European space programme has been part of a self-concious political project. The original developments in the early 1960?s were driven by a desire that Europe develop the use of space for purely peaceful purposes, in contrast to suggestions that NATO should play the lead-role in developing European space capabilities. Secondly it was felt that space exploration lent itself to the structural integration approach to European unification and that a joint space programme would help to bridge the divides in democratic Europe between the NATO and neutral states and between the EEC and EFTA groupings. This rationale was even more explicit after the merger of the existing European space organisations into the European Space Agency in 1975. Since 2000 ESA has begun to formalise a more explicit relationship with the EU, so that while the EU has its own space policy, ESA is essentially the body tasked to implement that policy, effectively creating the possibility of a future European Space Community. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]