alt Hacker NewsIf national governments can launch their own payloads without having to go through ESA or ArianeSpace it'll undermine the latter's position. They may even become competitors.
Italy accused the French-based ArianeSpace of deliberately taking launches away from the Italian-build Vega rocket in favor of the French-build Ariane rockets. They've now left ArianeSpace and are selling the rockets themselves and using ESA's infrastructure to launch them.
ESA funds and has awarded commercial contracts with ISAR and numerous other launch companies/consortia. Andoya spaceport is optimised for launching to polar orbits and not a realistic competitor to the ArianeSpace spaceport in French Guiana, much like SaxaVord and other spaceports based on the European continent. Vega is also an ESA-funded international collaboration project which actually started off managed by ArianeSpace, and the next generation of Avio-managed Vega rockets will be integrated in French Guiana and flown from ArianeSpace's spaceport...