You can't have that strategic independence in the long term is your capability falls more and more behind others in terms of technology and costs. This also has a ripple effect on your industry at large: Would European companies use this European independent launch capability if it was costly and obsolete? No. Would the European military be able to compete against adversaries? No.

An extreme illustration: would you say that Spain had strategic independent seafaring capability if it had maintained fleet a galleons to this day?