The Andean Community Failure to Create a Common Space Policy

Since the 70s, the Andean Community of Nations, an important union of countries in South America (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru), seeks for economic union and the creation of joint projects for the development of its member countries. One of the fields of action of the Community, is the creation of a space policy and the construction and launch of its own satellite. Concurrently, the ITU granted the Community a orbital position in the GEO to make use of it. Nevertheless, the efforts to create a public policy in the Andean Community failed due to the political and ideological differences between countries. The common satellite project fell into oblivion and it was even impossible for the countries to come into an agreement upon the use of the orbital position in the GEO granted by the ITU, thereafter, becoming necessary to hand over its use to a European telecommunications company. Nowadays, each country is implementing its own space policy with little room for the Andean Community institutions to operate in space matters thus hindering the principle of cooperation between countries