EU clinches unanimous Galileo deal!

EU clinches unanimous Galileo deal
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/EU_clinches_unanimous_Galileo_deal_11302007.html

AFP
Published: Friday November 30, 2007


European Union nations reached unanimous agreement Friday to go ahead
with the Galileo satellite navigation project, after allaying
concerns from Spain.

"The presidency announces that it was possible to have the agreement
of all the delegations, without exception, on Galileo," said
Portuguese Transport Minister Mario Lino, whose country holds the
EU's rotating presidency.

"We have always thought that it was best to be united on a project
that is so important for Europe," he said.

The long-delayed European project is meant to challenge the dominance
of the US-built Global Positioning System (GPS), which is widely used
in satellite navigation devices.

In a move late Thursday that deeply angered Spain, Portugal changed
the voting system to reach a deal on the flagship project, allowing a
qualified majority vote, rather than the unanimous decision that is
usually required.

Under the deal Spain would play host to a "Safety of Life" ground
centre dedicated to civil protection, in particular in the area of
maritime, air and rail security.

But it had demanded that, like Germany and Italy, it be allowed to
host a control centre for the future 30-satellite scheme aimed at
showcasing Europe's hi-tech know-how and due to come into operation
in 2013.

Under the compromise reached Friday, its "Safety of Life" centre
could "evolve into a fully qualified" control centre by 2013,
allowing Madrid to supervise operation of the satellites and their
transmissions to Earth.

"The Spanish centre, once it is up and running from a technical point
of view, would act as a control centre along with the others" in
Germany and Italy, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot
explained.

"Galileo is a test case, its the cutting edge European technology,"
he said.

"We have succeeded in uniting our two main objectives: (increasing)
competition ... and avoiding that Europe's space enterprise be
knocked out of contention."

The controversy is just the latest in a series that has dogged the
system.

Work on Galileo, a project already running five years behind the
initial schedule, stalled this year as cost over-runs piled up,
private contractors bickered and member states lobbied for their own
industrial interests.

Costs are estimated at 3.4 billion euros (five billion dollars) for
the 2007-2013 period.

As the original public-private partnership involving a consortium of
eight European companies fell apart, the European Commission
recommended that the project should be relaunched using public money
entirely.

Meanwhile the US military is already working on super-powerful
updates to its GPS technology to try to trump Galileo before it even
gets up in the air, according to military experts there.

Satellite navigation, which allows users to pinpoint their location
anywhere on Earth, is expected to be at the heart of new technologies
for steering cars or guiding boats as they arrive at ports, or
aircraft as they come into land.

It could also be used in accident assistance, search and rescue
missions, to monitor fishing boats or container ships as well as
mineral prospecting by miners, building pipelines, financial
transactions or leisure activities.



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