Brussels, 27/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - One of the main obstacles to the commercial application of space data would appear to be the fact that industries and service providers are unaware of the very existence and potential of this data, several member states stressed at an exchange of views on the uptake of space data, held after the first day of the Competitiveness Council on Thursday 26 May.
The issue was raised, amongst others, by Belgium, Ireland and Poland, indicated to us by two diplomatic sources. Also, ahead of any technical or structural obstacles, the main barrier therefore seems to be of a cultural and communication nature. “Path dependency”, in other words cultural inertia within entrepreneurial organisations, was stressed by the Presidency of the Council of the EU as one of the six major obstacles (see EUROPE 11550) blocking the commercial exploitation of space data. As a result of this relative obscurity, the vast majority of the member states agreed that there is an information deficit on the exploitation of space data.
The other problems referred to by the representatives of the national governments are mainly of a technical order. For instance, the question of the considerable volume of data storage was raised once again by Belgium. How can the compatibility of the data with future technologies be assured? What can be done about the attitude of awaiting the next generation of data, which leads to not making use of existing data, its representative asked. The interoperability of space data with other data was also raised by a number of member states. Here, the Commissioner for the Single Market, Elzbieta Bienkowska, said that she aimed to guarantee the compatibility of chipsets, currently GPS-compatible, with the Galileo constellation by 2020.
More generally, the ministers concluded that there is a lack of cooperation between the public authorities, businesses and service-providers and users. The last of these were the focus of particular attention from Spain and France, which called for Europe's future space strategy to adopt an approach based on the needs of the users/consumers of the data.
“The meeting was very academic, the political orientations will emerge more clearly at the informal meeting on space”, a diplomatic source told us. The meeting will be held on Monday 30 May (see EUROPE 11551). The Commission is to present its space strategy in October of this year, on the basis of the observations of the member states. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)