They are planning some form of reusability in the future, just because they have to, if they want to drastically reduce costs [0].
A thing that is not happening is letting private companies innovate in this space in Europe, as Ariane is still mostly government funded in the EU.
That looks promising at least.
> A thing that is not happening is letting private companies innovate in this space in Europe, as Ariane is still mostly government funded in the EU.
I'm not sure how true that is. I was part of an ESA project around ~2009, and some of my friends are in the space industry. It seems to be mostly private sector companies working together with ESA. You're right that it's not the same as SpaceX, but I don't think it's the case that ESA isn't "letting" private companies innovate.
Ariane Next could be a worthy competitor to the Falcon 9R, if they manage to get it to market by, say, 2020. Looks like they're planning to be about 15 years late to market there as well.
They've also got a fully-reusable Starship competitor in the works -- can't be bothered to dig up the link for it, sorry -- which if the schedule holds, should hit the market about 20 years after Starship enters commercial service.
To name a few (albeit not all private): Avio (Italy), HyImpulse Technologies (Germany), Isar Aerospace (Germany), MaiaSpace (France), PLD Space (Spain), Rocket Factory Augsburg (Germany) and Latitude (France).
But yes SpaceX got a lot right and it is dominating the market even from US competitors
It's good that Ariane exists, but it would be better to have competition
Kinda infuriating -- almost arrogant -- we're behind the US in space technology yet the ESA is insisting it knows the right way forward when a very promising path was actively being set and yet they outright dismissed it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianespace
The French government wanted a reliable way of sending heavy observation satellites into geostationary orbit. This explains many of Ariane's design choices. Civil and commercial activity are just extra or bonus way of cutting costs.
For example, one of Ariane lesser-known activities is to produce ballistic missiles for the French strike force.
More seriously, France often has a non-aligned or sovereign vision of its programmes, which makes many European countries uncomfortable, as they don't really want to assert any form of independence from the USA.