Europe gets a space policy

Technically untrue

Well, it looks nice on paper but the EU, by virtue of the treaty conditions between member states, cannot have a 'space policy' any more than it can have a foreign policy. The EU constitution contained these two little items amongst the myriad of waffle about nothing much but it wasn't ratified, and the existing treaties make no provision for these unified policies. Thus the EU is technically acting outside the bounds of the treaties that created it, but it gets around this by sneakilly making the bits that handle 'space policy' an NGO, much like the EU defence agency, which is not an official EU 'government' department and has no actual powers, but acts as if it is and does. Until and unless the constitutional treaty is ratified by all member states the Eu cannot claim these powers.

Does Europe still have nuclear weapons?

I think aside from us theres only one othe country in Europe that has a nuclear program (is it France?)

Document standards

An "almost impenetrable document"? Bit of an improvement then.

To date, Eurodocs have been pure examples of obfuscated bollox heavily padded with irrelevant waffle and liberally coated with an opaque layer of nationalistic axe-grinding. Try reading the draft constitution.

Standards must be slipping in Brussels. If they go on like this anyone will be able to understand what they're really doing and they'll have to get EuroJust to arrest all of us.......:-)

TeeCee

not quite enough.

The ability to put a satellite into orbit does not equate with ICBM capability, i.e. the ability to nuke anywhere on earth. For that you need proven ability to successfully orbit a vehical and guide it to re-entry.

Thus far there are only three powers that have demonstrated this capability: The US, Russia and now China. Given a sufficient launch vehicle the UK and France could presumably carry out this feat, but given that neither has bothered with a manned space programme we don't have real evidence that this is the case. Ditto for India/Pakistan.

Why the EU would want ICBMs is quite beyond me, although they need not be nuclear to be a deterrent force. Which begs the question of why the UK needs to replace Trident. Surely having the ability to deliver conventional explosives via Trident, etc. anywhere in the world would be sufficient?