The current decade has seen a major effort by European countries to achieve competitive status in the field of com-munication satellite systems. Effort and investment has been channelled by governments either nationally (the Italian Sirio Programme), bilaterally (the Franco-German Symphonie Programme) as well as through the multinational ESA, the European Space Agency (the OTS/ECS and Marecs Programmes). Europe is now at the crossroads of moving from the technological and preoperational phase, that has resulted from such programmes, to the implementation of operational systems responding to its own requirements. In addition, a technological base has been created in European industry capable of enabling it to compete for the worldwide market for regional and domestic systems that is now developing.