> They are planning some form of reusability in the future, just because they have to, if they want to drastically reduce costs [0].

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.