Comment by rsynnott

The Ariane family is, at least formally, ESA, not CNES, tho. The UK also has its own agency, but launches via ESA (or private). I think it would be probably fair to say that Ariane is more French than anything else, but it’s not strictly a French project.

Confusingly, the EU also has its own agency, though it doesn’t, as far as I can see, do much outside of operating Galileo. ESA, though obviously very EU aligned, isn’t an EU agency, and has non-EU/EEA/former-EU members (notably, _Canada_).