Brussels, 07/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - This summer, the agency tasked with managing the European satellite navigation positioning system, Galileo, will move from Brussels to Prague, in the Czech Republic.
The Czech parliament gave its approval on Thursday 3 May, in a formal procedure still to be completed for the headquarters transfer announced more than a year ago. “The agency will move to Prague over the summer. The actual date has not yet been set, but I imagine it will be 1 August”, said Pavel Dobes, Czech Minister for Transport, addressing the parliamentary assembly. The administrative services will therefore be moving east, a first for a European agency, and a symbol for the last member states to join the European Union. The agency's work will increase, with two satellites to be launched in the autumn, and further launches over the next several years to obtain a constellation of 18 satellites in 2014 and make Galileo's first services available, before achieving a full constellation of 30 satellites in 2020. (MD/transl.fl)