New space entrants and growing competition on the international commercial markets, new needs – in particular to respond to the growing crucial challenges faced by our planet and its inhabitants in their daily life -,new technologies to meet these challenges, new types of clients requiring new business relationships: all these developments strongly contribute to the reshaping of the international and, therefore, European space markets.

To face these newly emerging paradigms, the European space sector, which has held a prominent place in the world since a long time, has to increasingly become a "global player". The upcoming EU "Space Strategy"announced for 2016 by the European Commission will take these elements into consideration.

The Eighth Conference will offer stakeholders from the space sector, industry, users and European and national decision-makers, the opportunity to debate the main aspects of these stakes:

• Earth observation and remote sensing, radio navigation and positioning: perspectives and stakes of new generations of satellites
• Access to space: upheavals in sight in a growing and increasingly competitive launchers’ market
• Big Data: management of dissemination for competitive European downstream sectors
• SatCom industry: new technologies, new satellites, new frequencies allocations for new needs
• Funding of R&D projects, innovative technologies and new space and ground infrastructures: current and future Horizon 2020 programmes and the “Juncker Fund”
• European Security and Defence Policy: a growing potential role of space tools and satellites data in the future