A joint mission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Italian Space Agency took place in Stockholm on March 11 for consultations on space issues with Swedish counterparts.
Italy has been collaborating with Sweden for more than ten years in the space sector, a scientific, technological, and economic sector that offers great opportunities for both research and industry.
The visit followed the mission by a delegation from the Piedmont aerospace cluster to Stockholm and Kiruna in November 2024, but above all the meeting of the President of the Council of Ministers Meloni with the Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson in Rome on February 26, 2025, who, in the context of the promising areas of bilateral collaboration to be intensified, pointed out in particular the space sector.
The visit to Stockholm was attended by the Deputy Director General/Principal Director for integrated promotion and innovation, Giuseppe Pastorelli, the Head of the Office for space and aerospace policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Antonio Bartoloni, the Head pf Space Policies of the Unit of the Interministerial Committee on space and aerospace policies.
of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Luigi Riggio, and Danilo Rubini, Head of International Relations and Space Diplomacy Department of the Italian Space Agency, responsible for EU Relations and European countries.
The delegation first met at the Ministry of Research, Magnus Härviden, Senior Adviser of the Swedish Government for Space Research and Policy, and the responsible for Swedish space policies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the Ministry of Defense. During the meeting, the European space policies and programs were discussed, as well as the prospects for collaboration in the scientific and industrial fields, also in relation to the increasingly relevant national security policies.
The delegation then visited the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), the company entirely controlled by the State that operates Esrange, the only spaceport in the European territory of the EU in the far north of Sweden, a research and launch facility that also offers space services for tracking satellites and space missions. The meeting served to better identify opportunities for bilateral collaborations in relation to the emerging scientific and technological space challenges in Europe and worldwide.
The round of meetings concluded at the Swedish Space Agency (SNSA), where the Director General Ella Carlsson and her collaborators explored the potential for further cooperations both with the ASI and within programs of the European Space Agency (ESA).
Ambassador Pala expressed great satisfaction for the success of the meetings with the various Swedish institutional bodies: “The visit of our delegation was extremely timely and important, and all forums have been useful to identify possible bilateral initiatives, potential collaborations capable of having concrete outcomes, and synergies in the European context of political, scientific and industrial character. Space is certainly one of the priority sectors for this Embassy, because it is useful to better characterize the value of Italian-Swedish relationship.”
