Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-12-Speech-1-114"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I fully agree on the strategic importance of the space sector for Europe. It is the only technology capable of ensuring the emergence of new worldwide rules to genuinely allow the European industry to access new markets and new technological developments. The space sector to a large extent represents one of the frontiers of pioneering technology. Europe must not therefore fail to be involved in this extremely important sector. We must implement a new policy which integrates all European actions.
In accordance with my responsibilities, I have proposed to the monitoring committee, in which all the States are represented, the name of a director for the joint undertaking, to implement the joint undertaking solely with Community funds, without making use of the funds of the European Space Agency.
It is the Member States who have blocked the proposal I have made in this field.
So let me make it very clear, ladies and gentlemen: within the Community field, the problems have been resolved. It is within the European Space Agency that the problems are still to be resolved and that some Member States – sometimes certain Member States and sometimes others, it does not matter – are blocking a project which is absolutely strategic for the development not just of the space sector, but for the technological development of Europe, and so that it does not get left behind in relation to a series of essential and key applications.
I would like to clearly express my great concern at the repeated delays – I said this a year and a half ago, in December 2001 – of the project in the Council of Ministers, which jeopardises any real possibility of its being implemented, particularly if we are saying that we want the whole system to operate according to strict market rules. We must choose. If we want hard and fast market rules, it makes no sense that we have been wasting our time for more than a year in the European Space Agency arguing about which country or city the headquarters will be in, whether the President of Galileo Industries is to be this person or that person, or whether they come from this or that country of the European Union. What we need to do is seek the best options. We must seek the most efficient location and headquarters. That is what we must seek.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I can only agree with what has just been said here, but I would like to say to you that there are limits, and the limits are that there is an intergovernmental part which is unfortunately deadlocked.
Mr President, of course I will continue to make every possible effort and apply all the pressure I can in order to move this project ahead since, as the honourable Members know, I have invested a lot in it for many years and I believe it is essential to European technological development.
A moment ago, Mrs McNally spoke of the importance and European added value of the space sector. And in this regard I proposed earlier the inclusion of space policy within the field of Community competences within the context of the review of the Treaties which is currently taking place in the Convention and therefore the drawing up of a future constitutional Treaty.
The second aspect: space at the service of Community policies, a key objective in relation to the White Paper; it should therefore be included in applications such as agriculture, fisheries, education, the environment, which several speakers have mentioned.
The European Space Agency will be able to act to stimulate programmes if the view is taken that space is currently of strategic importance; and the Agency can take an approach which overcomes the current restrictions of the intergovernmental approach.
With regard to the launcher sector, the Commission is preparing a report for September on this strategic sector, which is unquestionably one of the sectors with the greatest difficulties at this time.
Finally, I will comment on the Galileo programme, which, like all these issues – I would repeat – are the responsibility of my colleague Mr Busquin, who is doing tremendous work together with the whole team in the Directorate-General for Research and Technological Development.
Ladies and gentlemen, since I took on my responsibilities as Commissioner, I have dedicated every effort to Galileo, and not only effort, but also political impetus, in accordance with my capacities and very willingly. It was a project which was far from being able to be realised when I arrived here. Such a significant project was being dealt with by just two officials for the whole project (one of them is here today – no longer in the Directorate-General Transport – and I would like to congratulate Mr Tytgat on his will, because at the end of the day, we are often able to build Europe thanks to specific people who have the courage to move forward promoting their ideas), a project which was very far from maturity. I have given my personal impetus to this project since I began to work here. And I am going to say one thing to you: it has been paralysed for more than a year. The agreement within the Community was reached more than a year ago during the Spanish Presidency, which dedicated much effort to this project.
I would like to say to the honourable Members that the Community aspect has worked, though more slowly than I would have liked. What has failed has been the intergovernmental aspect which takes the form of the European Space Agency. On occasions, in the course of one year, two countries have blocked the decisions of the European Space Agency. And I understand that over the last month another two have caused problems - in particular one which I know very well.
I have always called upon all of them to resolve these differences as soon as possible and not to block the project. I have heard ministers in the Council of Ministers haggling over the project, saying that it could not be done by means of an agency, as was proposed at the outset, because we wanted a fully commercial project, with commercial criteria, approached purely from the point of view of economics and economic efficiency, and now I cannot believe that the haggling within the European Space Agency relates to whether the headquarters is in one country or another or whether the Presidency is of one nationality or another. This entirely contradicts what I have heard, not from these ministers but from their transport colleagues, during a series of Councils in which we have had very tough debates."@en1
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