The European Union’s secure satellite communications programme, EU GOVSATCOM, has started building a permanent operational site in Cologne, Germany, following a groundbreaking ceremony held last week.
The ceremony brought together Catherine Kavvada, Director for Secured and Connected Space, Rodrigo da Costa, Executive Director of the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), and Hendrik Wüst, Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, alongside Matthias Hauer, a parliamentary state secretary, and Stéphane Beemelmans, Deputy Chair of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Executive Board, the European Commission informed in a release on Thursday.
EU GOVSATCOM has been operational since January 2026 and provides secure satellite communications to EU institutions and national public authorities working on security-critical missions and critical infrastructure.
The system pools satellite communications capacity offered by participating EU countries and makes it available to authorised users, including those that do not have their own national satellite capacity.
How the GOVSATCOM “hub” works
The service relies on a secure platform known as a “hub”, which connects authorised government users to the pooled satellite communications capacity across Europe, the Commission said.
An interim GOVSATCOM Hub has been operated by EUSPA since January 2026, delivering what the organisation described as secure and cost-efficient satellite communications services to EU member states.
That interim set-up is being progressively replaced by two permanent operational sites — one in Athens, Greece, and one in Cologne — through which the hub will be run.
The two sites are intended to provide redundancy and continuity of service across Europe’s governmental communications network and support the current system of pooled capacity from multiple satellites operated by several countries.
GOVSATCOM is described as a precursor to IRIS², the EU’s planned sovereign multi-orbit communications system.
