29/03/2018 (Agence Europe) – In March, the European Union signed a number of cooperation agreements with Brazil, Chile, Columbia and India for the use of data from the terrestrial Copernicus observation programme. Philippe Brunet, the director of Space policy and Copernicus at DG Internal Market and Industry (DG Grow) signed an agreement on 8 March with Brazil, Chile and Columbia and on 19 March with India. These agreements provide free access to data generated by the Copernicus programme (more than 36 petabytes) to third countries. In exchange, the EU has access to the observations and archives generated by the Indian and Brazilian Space programmes. Similar agreements have been signed with the US and Australia. According to the Commission press release, a third of the worlds population has access to Copernicus data. (PH)