as Europe enters satellite launch race

Sure... Europe isn't launching satellites for decades.

This isn't about satellite launching, Europe does this from Guiana Space Centre in Kourou for a very long time.

This is about it being the first successfull orbital launch from a European location (so without all that nice free speed you get when going for an equatorial orbit and starting close to the equator eastwards) by a private start-up less than 8 years old. On their second try in total (people following such things might remember the huge amount of explosions Rapid Unscheduled Disassemblies starting rocket projects –privat or otherwise– tend to produce in the beginning).