Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-07-Speech-4-102"
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"en.20020207.6.4-102"2
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".
I consider the establishment of a European satellite navigation programme to be generally sensible and deserving of support. I have, despite this, voted against the Glante report today, as I am unable to follow the rapporteur down the road he is taking.
In no way is there any certainty that Galileo will succeed in economic terms as a competitor to GPS, which has until now enjoyed a monopoly of the market. I therefore take the view that the financial risk should be borne equally by the public sector and private enterprise. The rapporteur wants to facilitate industry's involvement in financing Galileo by means of a development company instead of giving it a share in the Joint Undertaking, as the Commission had planned. One objective in this is to allay the Member States' misgivings on the security policy front, and the other is to avoid the private businesses which constitute part of the Joint Undertaking enjoying competitive advantages when tenders are invited to set Galileo up and operate it.
I take the view, however, that the end result of this purely optional solution to financial participation will be that the investments Galileo will need will be raised by the public sector alone. Industry will get on board only when Galileo has demonstrated its earning potential and is set to make profits. This would boil down to funds raised by taxation being invested as venture capital and to substantial shares in the profits then being handed over to private enterprise. That is not how I envisage taxpayers' money being handled.
Nor am I convinced by the argument of possible conflicts of interest in tendering procedures. It is, for example, the usual practice in municipalities for enterprises owned by the local authority to tender jointly with private firms when contracts are put out, without this resulting in unequal treatment.
As regards the argument of security policy, I have misgivings of a quite different kind. Both the Commission and the Council leave no room for doubt that they regard Galileo as a central component of the independence of European defence policy. Parliament has not been able to make up its mind to decisively reject the use of Galileo for military purposes. I, though, reject all use of satellite navigation systems for military purposes."@en1
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