I’d agree with that if what ESA is doing is encouraging a European commercial company to develop this service. My (unverified) assumption was that it would be an ESA government effort similar to the Shuttle or Ares in the U.S. It seems to me that space agencies should be concentrating on new areas without current commercial viability, while encouraging and using commercial services for traditional areas like LEO transportation.

The more companies competing the better.

Instead of efforts to match SpaceX and Orbital, why doesn’t ESA try something useful, impressive, and currently non-commercial? Maybe an orbiting propellant depot, space tug, solar sail demo, space beamed power demo, robotic demo of satellite maintenance beyond what’s been done so far, or something like that would be better.