Brussels, 17/02/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is standing firm. It wants the European Earth observation programme GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) to be paid for out of the European budget and not by the member states. The resolution by Norbert Glante (S&D, Germany) was adopted by the plenary session of the European Parliament on Thursday 16 February. It laments the fact that the Commission did not include the funding of the GMES programme in its proposals for the multi-annual financial framework 2014-2020. Following a similar initiative on the part of MEP Aldo Patriciello (EPP, Italy) (see EUROPE 10536), Glante in turn argues that counting on funding from outside the Union budget is not viable and could have unfortunate consequences for the development and sales of GMES applications. He expressly calls on the Commission to make a legislative proposal to correct this lack of foresight for the European programme. The French MEPs of the EPP Group Rachida Dati, Christine de Veyrac and Damien Abad fully support the message conveyed by Glante's resolution: “In a context of crisis and major budgetary efforts, the Commission wants to get rid of this programme by inappropriately moving its funding over onto the states. But GMES is a symbol of the Europe of projects, growth leverage, the Europe our citizens believe in!” They call directly on the president of the Commission: “let President Barroso come to our regions to explain why the Commission is disengaging!” (MD/transl.fl)