Programme for Associate Member States

Associate Membership is a special cooperative status granted under Article XIV.1 and XIV.3 of the ESA Convention. It allows the country to participate, in the same way as Member States, to any of the ESA optional programmes but does not grant access to the ESA Science programme or Technology Development Element (TDE).

The status of Associate Member is granted through the signature of an Associate Membership Agreement. Association Agreements were signed with Austria, Norway and Finland. Since then, the Association Agreement has been updated to include a capability development funding scheme, called Requesting Party Activities (RPA) and the duration changed to seven years, which can be extended indefinitely. Current Associate Members are: Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Associate Membership:

• Takes into account the relevant industrial policy measures in accordance with the Resolution adopted by Council on 13 December 2018 (ESA/C/R/CCLXXVII/Res.1 (final));
• Provides access to ESA optional programmes;
• Provides access to ESA Young Graduate Trainee (YGT), Networking Partnership Initiatives (NPI) and research fellow opportunities;
• Helps the countries build a sustainable national space industry and secure their geographical return.

Key features include:

• A renewable seven-year duration of the Association Agreement (Article 18.1);
• The introduction of direct support from ESA to the countries for training, organisation of events and advice (Article 3.1);
• The participation of the countries in the Requesting Party Activities (or RPA, formerly referred to as Third Party Activities) and the introduction of corresponding framework conditions (Art 10.2 and Annexes I and II).

In this context, a dedicated Requesting Party Activities (RPA) scheme has been put in place. This is a development funding scheme open only to entities in that country. The objectives of Associate Member’s participation in the RPA are:

• To complement ESA optional programmes with activities falling outside their normal scope;
• To facilitate the implementation of a holistic national space policy;
• To ensure wide support in the country for space development funding;
• To give the best chance of securing the geographical return from ESA programmes by increasing the capabilities and experience of national space industry to an appropriate level;
• To prepare the entities in that country for future subscriptions to additional ESA optional programmes.

Further information

For further information on the AM RPA, contact:

Stephen Airey
Head of Division Capability & Country Support
email: stephen.airey@esa.int