Funnily enough the European Launcher Challenge just dropped recently, supposed to be modelled on NASA's procurement process that ultimately lead to SpaceX being

Funnily enough the European Launcher Challenge just dropped recently, supposed to be modelled on NASA's procurement process that ultimately lead to SpaceX being a thing. But the EUR169m contracts aren't likely to get you a Falcon 9 clone, and there isn't exactly a ton of private capital for newspace sloshing around in Europe If anything Europe has the opposite problem: the launch startups are all far too small to do anything on a Falcon 9 scale. SpaceX did't get to Falcon 9 early either. Sure, Arianespace probably could build a Falcon 9 clone, but it's not something they'd want to self fund, and there's quite a few ESA members that don't want to see most of their budget contributions go to funding the development of a foreign launch monopolist...