Introduction Understanding the past and current strategy, policy and governance structures of Members States is the key to preparing future strategies and setting up a coherent European space policy and programme. As put forward in this book, framing theory can be used in this process (Kohler-Koch 1997; Mörth 2000; Baumgartner 2001; Sabatier 2011). There are several political loci with different specificities that create and influence the actor’s frames. The actors engaging in these loci influence the political process within a certain frame or narrative that has been shaped by their background (March and Olsen 1996; Sabatier 2011). Space is a particularly interesting and dynamic field because it includes many horizontal and vertical frames in which policies emerge. At the top of the vertical axis, the European Space Agency (ESA), as an intergovernmental organisation, brings actors together under a specific setting and steers a peaceful, scientific, industrial and cooperative frame. The ESA was created in 1975 by 10 founding Members States; there are now 20 Member States and the organisation is still growing. The ESA is Europe’s gateway to space, with a mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capabilities and to ensure that investments in space continue to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. There are a number of articles in the ESA Convention that are relevant to a European space policy and programme, as well as to the Member States successfully participating in this framework. One of the most defining legal provisions that directly effects the ESA’s frame is Article II of the ESA Convention, which describes the purpose of the ESA and gives it the power to formulating policies:[It can be achieved] by elaborating and implementing a long-term European space policy, by recommending space objectives to the Member States, and by concerting the policies of the Member States with respect to other national and international organisations and institutions; by elaborating andimplementing activities and programmes in the space field; by coordinating the European space programme and national programmes, and by integrating the latter progressively and as completely as possible into the European space programme, in particular as regards the development of applications satellites; by elaborating and implementing the industrial policy appropriate to its programme and by recommending a coherent industrial policy to the Member States.