No. It’s simply about accessibility and sovereignty. Even though the ESA can launch from French Guiana, the space port is an ocean-away from Europe! How much do you think that fact will affect the cost and the launch cadence for Europe?

Now they prove they can launch directly from Norway with their own production from Munich and elsewhere and that has immense potential for the future: much higher cadence, significant lower cost and always-on accessibility.

The only way, Europe can have a Starlink similar network is to launch from their own soil and reuse the first stage. Also from the perspective of security, launching spy and other military satellites from European soil is the only practical possibility in this political climate.

Europe is a continent, not a nation.

Launching far off the equator makes it more difficult and is therefore a bigger technological achievement.