ESA has had loads of orbital launches. Arianespace is a French company and the world's first commercial space launch co. Not sure it's reasonable to discount EU as stagnated.
There are few places in EU that make sense to launch from - the ideal launch site is from the equator, from land, with an empty ocean to the East to launch over. Look at the EU geographically and you can see why the European launches would chose a non EU site.
Now with the US and Russia both becoming poor candidates geopolitically, I suppose it makes sense to explore local options, even if they're less efficient/safe/convenient.
> Now with the US and Russia both becoming poor candidates geopolitically, I suppose it makes sense to explore local options, even if they're less efficient/safe/convenient.
I don't think that's the reason. The ESA exclusively uses a spaceport in French Guiana, which is politically in France and in the EU, but is not geographically in Europe. This company plans to use the Guiana spaceport, too, for equatorial launches (using the old Diamant launch facility). But the Norway site is fine for _polar_ launches.
> it's reasonable to discount EU as stagnated
In this case it is. It peaked in the 1990s with resurgency after Ariane 5 came out but it hasn't been competitive for many years now.
Arianespace was kind of the SpaceX of the 80s and 90s and IIRC they had the majority of the market for a few years.
Unfortunately Europe got permanently got stuck in the early 2000s in quite a few ways.
I'm surprised they don't see more activity for polar orbits. You want to launch north-west or south-west and into ocean, northern scandanavia seems perfect for that.
Going westwards means going against Earth's rotation, requiring extra fuel and what not. That's why almost every rocket goes eastwards.
Polar orbits have to go west, because they have to counter the earth's rotation if they aim to cross over the pole. Further north means less rotation to counter.