For a long time, space policy was pursued outside the EU framework either by MS individually or through independent cooperation structures, such as the European Space Agency (ESA). The intergovernmental ESA Convention was signed in Paris on 30 May 1975 by Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK and entered into force on 30 October 1980. While the EU’s involvement in space activities had been developing already since the 1980s, with the establishment of the Galileo and Copernicus space programmes at the turn of the millennium, these activities were only given a firm footing in the EU primary law by the ToL’s introduction of Article 189 TFEU.