Almost 300 amendments were submitted to the report by Massimiliano Salini (EPP, Italy) on the European space programme regulation. A significant number of these amendments focus on the budget to the overall envelope for the space programme, as well as the budget lines allocated to the different programmes.
MEPs appear at the same time to be moving towards an enhanced programme budget, as does indeed the rapporteur, who proposed, it should be recalled, increasing it to €16.7 billion (see EUROPE 12066) as opposed to the €16 billion in the European Commission proposal (see EUROPE 12034). This increase appears to have the support of Dario Tamburrano (ELDD, Italy) in his amendments.
The most ambitious, however, appears to be the Czech Conservative Evžen Tošenovský, who proposed increasing the overall budget to €19.5 billion or €7.8 billion for the Copernicus terrestrial observation programme and €1.5 billion for the Govsatcom encrypted communication programme.
Françoise Grossetête (France, EPP) suggested increasing the budget to €18 billion of which €6.8 billion will go to Copernicus and €1.5 billion to Govsatcom and the space surveillance programme (SSA).
Michal Boni (Poland, EPP) would like to increase the overall budget to €16.3 billion for funding a new budget line to strengthen “satellite connectivity”. Marian-Jean Marinescu (EPP, Romania) took the trouble to convert all the European Commission's budget proposals in current prices to constant prices for 2018.
The question of the space programme budget will be one of the main political points in the future negotiations. The space industry is hoping to increase the programme budget to €18 billion (see EUROPE 12036).
According to one senior internal source, the Commission's budget proposal was the result of intense internal budget debates. We have been informed that the proposal originally put on the table only contained one figure. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)