Brussels, 18/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has criticised the weaknesses of the conclusions of the Laeken European Council on GALILEO, but has suspended its threat to withdraw its proposal to continue with the European satellite navigation project. On Monday, Ms Loyola de Palacio's spokesperson said that she had been very surprised and disappointed at the Conclusions. The Commission feels that the European Council's Conclusions are barely coherent because they highlight the strategic importance of the project without making any concrete decisions. Romano Prodi's spokesperson noted that this only confirmed Mr Prodi's comments last week on the problems the Council had in following up its commitments. The Transport Commissioner's spokesperson explained that the Commission would assess events over the next few weeks and if the decisions is postponed to a later date in March, there would be grounds for concerns. The Commission had initially been threatening to withdraw the GALILEO project failing any formal decision on continuing the project being taken at the very beginning of 2002.
In a press release, Commissioner de Palacio said that all the elements needed to take a decision had been on the table at Laeken and that they would see in the next few weeks whether the Laeken Conclusions on GALILEO's strategic importance would make it possible to take the final political decision. She added that if no decision were taken, the programme's credibility would be damaged vis-à-vis 1) the space industry which had already made considerable investment and is awaiting a decision in order to continue its work; 2) third countries which have entered negotiations over co-operation (the United States, Russia, China and Canada); 3) the need to begin operations in 2008 which is seen as an essential date by the auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers in terms of ensuring the commercial success of the programme; 4) the World Telecommunications Organisation in terms of keeping the frequencies allocated to GALILEO.
The United States has denied the Commission's statements outright (that it had become much more approving of GALILEO since 11 September). As reported in EUROPE on 30 November, p.7, the United States stress that they have never received any assurances about GALILEO's compatibility with the GPS system or about the civil use of the European system. In a letter to the Belgian Defence Minister, André Flahaut, at the beginning of the month, the Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfwitz, expressed his "concerns" about the security ramifications of GALILEO's radio spectrum overlying the GPS spectrum (for military messages) and that GALILEO would significantly "complicate our ability to ensure availability of critical military GPS services in a time of crisis or conflict". He added "I do not believe the current civil forum being used by the EC provides the proper venue to fully assess the security implications".