Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-28-Speech-3-094"
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"en.20040128.8.3-094"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in the course of this legislature a number of reports about Galileo have been made to the European Parliament in turn by Mrs Langenhagen, who is here today, Mr Glante, Mr Dhaene and myself. They were always presented positively, but nevertheless had to overcome many obstacles to get our European project adopted. It was criticised as duplicating the American GPS, but that made me think of the fable of the blind man and the paralytic. Were we expected to call on the United States to be our eyes and show us the way to go? The cost was said to be ruinous, although it is about the same as building a little more than 100 km of high-speed railway line. Our wisdom finally carried the day and, concerned to implement the European Union’s strategy for employment, economic reform, research, and social cohesion decided by the Lisbon European Council in March 2002, we adopted Galileo.
I have now been working for nearly a year on this report to bring us up to date on this project and on the integration of EGNOS into Galileo. However, the fear of a delay in implementation was such that we have been overtaken, and happily so, by the project being put in place and I am now in a position to present the excellent results that we achieved in 2003 and to make a number of recommendations for operational implementation in order to ensure that Galileo really does go into service by 2008 at the latest.
I am therefore taking account here of two Commission communications. The first is concerned with the state of progress following the Council decision of 26 March 2002, which saw the informal adoption of the regulation creating the joint undertaking on 21 May 2002, and the second the integration of EGNOS into Galileo. The communication covers the following aspects: the creation of joint undertakings, which has now been done, the system’s security – on our recommendation the supervisory authority was created at the same time as the security centre; its role is vital because it ensures that Galileo will remain a project geared to its users’ wishes; I believe Parliament should be more closely involved with this committee in a way that remains to be decided – service definition and frequency planning, the reservation of frequencies. The problem of the overlay of signals on the fifth service (or PRS) with the US army’s M signal has also been settled. The Commission and the United States have found a compromise. The Galileo signal will surround the US signal and will no longer be overlaid. Relations with third countries have been normalised. There are no problems with the Russian Glonass system. There is some cohabitation, or at least consultation, for the American GPS. And countries are joining us, like China, with whom a promising agreement, especially in the field of research, was initialled in Beijing on 18 September 2003.
By way of reminder, Galileo is merely a giant clock consisting of around 30 satellites capable of determining a position in time and space very accurately. Unlike GPS and Glonass, it must remain a purely civilian project. The services it will provide are very important, especially in the environmental field. As a tool for protecting nature, it will help to track pollution by dangerous substances, track icebergs, and map the oceans and sea levels. It will help to monitor the atmosphere, the ionosphere, radio communications, space science and even to predict earthquakes or monitor endangered species. It will be possible to pinpoint dangerous substances such as nuclear waste at any time. We have not forgotten space pollution either, since we shall have to ensure that any new object launched into space can be neutralised. There will be many other developments in transport and communications.
I would like to stress Galileo’s fundamental contribution as a spearhead for our European space policy, integrating more closely the roles of the Union and the ESA. And in the European Research Area, a large amount of funding is provided in the sixth research and development framework programme by the European Space Agency’s ARTES programme and the private partners. With a large part of the funding coming from the public purse, the results of the research and the intellectual property will belong to all the European Union’s citizens. So far as EGNOS is concerned, I propose that it be integrated into Galileo, through the good offices of the joint undertaking, because this satellite radio navigation system can only be based on our global system.
Galileo is a very important achievement of our legislature. It was proposed and supported by the Council and the Commission, and I want to pay tribute to Mrs de Palacio in transport and energy, to the Director-General Mr Lamoureux and also to Mr Busquin for their energy and determination in bringing it about. I also want to thank all my fellow Members for the constant interest they have shown in Galileo, especially those on the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism and the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy.
Galileo is a fine European Union project. First and foremost, it will help to implement our policy of sustainable development with the ethics essential to an action of such breadth. Our Parliament can be proud to have been a driving force in the dynamic that our Assembly has shown and which will help to make the European Union more independent; it is a step towards a decision full of political significance and one very much called for by our draft Constitution."@en1
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