The new European Space Policy (ESP) has contributed to the creation of an hard factor European infrastructure in the upstream segment with EGNOS and GALILEO and the soft factor infrastructure has yet to be build in order to overcome natural boundaries that often still prevail in our decentralized Europe. The virtues of decentralization offer plenty of creativity and innovation usually within SME and companies communities and at the regional levels with the support of local authorities, which require to be guided and supported within this coordinated ESP.

ENCADRE stands for "European Network of Clusters for Satellite Applications Development" which documents the enlarged action of ENCADRE focusing on satellite communication, satellite navigation and earth observation market segments. A permanent Secretariat was established starting on April 1st, 2009 with offices in Munich and Sophia Antipolis and after signature of a 2 years contract with ESA-TTPO as co-funding entity. To secure appropriate financing of the Secretariats coordination activities, co-funding was also obtained by participating at FP7 tenders and by EC direct funding support. All cluster related project and working commission work are funded by cluster funding, which has already been secured by in-kind contributions as part of the EC accepted proposal for the establishment of this permanent Secretariat. One of the particularity of ENCADRE is to secure active membership participation by "in-kind" working commission based support, provided by the major European cluster organisations and networks.

ENCADRE has the aim to become one of the key European supporting networks for SME and companies oriented funding and service support action by 2011/2012 before the full deployment of Galileo, in line with the joint EC/GSA objectives. In order to obtain concrete and tangible results for innovation transparency and the international transfer of such, three international working commissions have been created in order to provide ongoing KPI (key performance indicators) based results for cluster SME innovation activities, exchanges and the internationalization of SME business development activities.

The EC has also launched an ambitious program to foster knowledge intensive services (KIS) including satellite downstream applications, which shall be closely linked to the activities of our network ENCADRE. In line with the coming soon European Mobile and Mobility Industries Alliance (EMMIA), the aim will be to establish a policy dialogue at European level in support of innovative services in mobile and mobility industries with SMEs at local, regional, national and European level and to address major societal challenges for example through large scale demonstrators in specific fields of interest such as sustainable tourism.

Dr Haunschild, Aerospace Moderator for Bayern and President of ENCADRE