Galileo satellite project moves into launch pad phase

Date: 14/12/00

By Peter Chapman

TRANSPORT ministers will next week start the final countdown to Europe's multi-billion-euro Galileo satellite project, but will demand safeguards to ensure the money is well spent.

The decision to fund the initiative will move Europe's bid to set up a rival to existing military-funded US and Russian satellite navigation systems from the drawing board to the launch pad.

Diplomats say ministers will agree that the EU should shoulder half of the €1.1 billion pre-launch 'development and validation' phase of the programme - which will run until the end of 2005 - with the European Space Agency, funded by national governments, paying the rest.

Next week's ministerial meeting will pave the way for an agency to manage the project, as well as a business plan stating what Galileo will offer to customers.

These are likely to include a host of mass-market services such as in-car navigation and high technology for civil aviation. Other applications are likely to include telemedicine, the tagging and tracking by satellite of prisoners, and the monitoring of fertiliser use by farmers.

Ministers will insist that Galileo must be able to work with the existing US and Russian systems to guard against a worst-case scenario in which the system fails. They will also demand strong safeguards to guarantee its security.

Diplomats predict that ministers will echo the warnings issued by EU leaders in Nice last week about the cost of the project by attaching conditions to protect their investment. These include an insistence on annual budget reviews before additional money is allocated, and a demand that €1.5-billion in private funding is found for the deployment phase, scheduled for 2006-2007. "As long as the project goes along on these lines, it will get the money," added one official.

The European Commission has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Galileo initiative, which it claims will make money from 2007 onwards. Transport chief Loyola de Palacio and her predecessor in the post Neil Kinnock have argued that it is essential for Europe to establish its own system to rival the US and Russians.

Transport ministers are due to start the final countdown to Europe's multi-billion-euro Galileo satellite project, but will demand safeguards to ensure the money is well spent.