European ministers for space affairs will sketch the broad outlines of their vision for the future of Copernicus in their conclusions on the mid-term assessment of the programme, which were seen by EUROPE on Monday 27 November and which are expected to be adopted without debate at the Competitiveness Council on Friday.
These conclusions were adopted by the member states’ ambassadors to the EU at the Coreper meeting on Friday 24 November. They align very closely with the informal meeting on space affairs held in Tallinn at the start of November at which there was consensus among the member states for allocating the budget necessary to ensure the continuation and development of the programme (see EUROPE 11900).
In their conclusions, ministers acknowledge the key role played by this programme in ensuring independent access for Europe to “strategic” geo-spatial data and, in this context, stressed the need for secure, integrated infrastructure to guarantee the continuity and future development of the programme in line with the needs of users, without prejudging the forthcoming multiannual financial framework.
Leading role for space data. Data occupy a major role in the text, which lays emphasis on the need to maintain the volume, uniformity, continuity, reliability, management and quality of the data produced, and completely free access to them.
The conclusions highlight the need for infrastructure development, taking account of technological progress and trends which impact Earth observation, including “New Space” – the emerging American private sector in the space domain – focusing on climate change, sustainable development and security.
Ministers call on the European Commission and member states to examine new commercial and operational models with a view to building up the capacity of Copernicus and data sources. The text calls on the Commission to examine synergies between Copernicus and the other programmes, notably Galileo and EGNOS.
Czech ambush on stronger all for GSA. The issue of synergies is of great importance to the Czech Republic which issued a reservation on this subject before lifting it at the last Coreper meeting, according to our information. Prague wanted much closer integration between Copernicus and the Galileo and EGNOS programmes. The reason behind this is that the GSA, the European agency which manages the latter two programmes, is based in the Czech capital.
Stronger DIAS. Elsewhere, the member states underline the importance of creating an Earth observation data ecosystem in Europe and, to do so, they want to build on the Copernicus Data and Information Access Services (DIAS), an information platform due to be deployed at the start of 2018.
The space industry is looking for a budget of €7 billion (see EUROPE 11882) and to the ESA is thinking in terms of €8 billion (see EUROPE 11902). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)