Why is Russia the only country that seems to spend significant money on space exploration in Europe..?

The two are the only superpower rivals. None of the European countries match them, each of which is comparable in size to an average state in USA. Russia is even more humongous that it is unfair to compare it with 'A European country'.

European nations had their day when they were Global Imperial powers (British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Portuguese & Italian), each with ten or more times its area & population that came very handy in fighting wars & to challenge USSR.

With its resources USSR could embark upon a massive & ambitious Space programme. Also, if a country can develop its prowess in sending a satellite into orbit the same can be used to send an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile onto a target spot. Its a dual (duel !) technology.

The only other "country" is China.

However, Europe (many countries sharing their resources) are spending quite a bit. And don't forget that the USA (a plural name) is actually 50 "states" sharing their resources, and the "Russian" space program started off as the Soivet Union's program (made up of 23 "independent" republics, sharing their resources).

Therefore, the only real "country" is China, the others being unions of states. Russia still gets support from a few of the other republics so that their program is still shared among a few countries (although Russia provides almost all the resources).

The only other countries that are still working on their own, in space (but with much smaller programs) include Israel, Japan, India. North Korea is pretending to try to start such a program.

They don't, really. They're just better at operating on a tight budget. While the US was spending billions on the Space Shuttle, budget constraints at the end of the Cold War forced the Russians to continue making do with the Soyuz, which in retrospect turned out to be a much more cost-effective solution.

ESA runs on almost the same amount of money as Roscosmos, but they got a much later start.

Actually, the ESA has been quite aggressive in interplanetary and lunar exploration, and has been more successful in recent years than Russia in that regard. And, their budget is $5.38 billion US dollars per year... while Russia spends $5.8 billion... not exactly a huge difference. If Russia has an advantage, it was that it had a working, reliable manned launch vehicle left over from its Cold War heyday, and they've been able to keep it in production with only minor revisions. And, they've been able to sell space on said launch vehicle to foreign space agencies because the costs of developing one from the ground up are rather intense.

Thus, I must propose that the reason is your selective perception.

why should they when the US spends billions on communications and the global positioning network then just hands it over to anyone who wants to use it,it even helped Sadam Hussein target his scud missles better

Might it be a true . but that is a fact his reaching at moon & now to maintain touch to achieve the same title in.

Ummm ... ESA (European Space Agency)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esa