Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-28-Speech-3-100"
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"en.20040128.8.3-100"2
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"Mr President, we certainly agree with the rapporteur’s statement relating to the satellite system and a civil satellite system but I believe that we should not have too many illusions about the possibility of clearly separating civil and military purposes, above all in view of the military repercussions of civil technology; still less can we be under the illusion that civil and military purposes are separate in dictatorships such as China, which use precisely these civilian instruments designed to locate people as tools for widespread repression, made possible thanks to new technology, in particular new satellite technology.
This is why I believe that the report should have expressed greater concern on this issue. We welcome the conclusion of negotiations with China regarding its participation in the Galileo system. In fact, the risks at military level are not theoretical risks, but those indicated by the European Commission as useful factors, from a European point of view, for its defence. I would like to quote from a document – a Commission position paper – of 31 December 2001 which stated that: ‘if the Galileo Programme is abandoned, we will in the next twenty or thirty years lose our autonomy in defence’;
and again, on 12 March 2002: ‘although designed for civilian applications Galileo will also give the EU a military capability’, and the Directorate General indicated the usefulness of a separate Galileo signal to support the military aspect. In view of this clarification from the European Commission’s Directorate General regarding our technology; it is as well to know that this is also valid for China.
The issue is not about sabotaging the Galileo system; it is explicitly about taking these risks into consideration and taking adequate measures – involving regulations, procedures and, if necessary, sanctions – to prevent these technological repercussions, which are in part unavoidable and only natural, from going beyond what is acceptable. Otherwise, there will be nothing for it but to imagine that the speed and ease with which the agreement with China was reached is part of the European Union’s larger political strategy. I apologise for digressing and implicating the government of the rapporteur’s country, but I believe that the attitude that we have seen recently from President Chirac
and Prime Minister Villepin regarding the Chinese communist regime is a worrying sign of a very precise strategic and political direction. If adequate countermeasures are not taken, there is a genuine risk of very real technological repercussions over the next few years for the army of a country that is antidemocratic, illiberal and a dictatorship and that knows how to turn secret services and specifically civil espionage to military use, something that our own intelligence organisations are, in any case, also doing."@en1
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