Brussels, 02/04/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Galileo saga is still making waves…and meeting new obstacles. Following last Friday's resolution of the main problem, pitting Italy against Germany, we were expecting the European Space Agency (ESA) to reach a definitive agreement on Wednesday on its participation in the European system radio-navigation satellite system covering the world (EUROPE 1 April p 14). The ESA meeting on Wednesday was finally called off because Spain is so far refusing to ratify the agreement, explain ESA sources. Spain is unhappy with the 9% participation rate that it will be allocated according to the German-Italian agreement and is requesting that its participation increases to 10% or 11%. ESA is hoping that this will be settled next week, explained one of its spokesmen. The 9 April has been mentioned at the Commission.
The European Commission decided to put off the launch of the common enterprise until next week, in the hope that an agreement would be reached at EAS in the meantime. In this case, the joint venture could be launched by two shareholders, the Commission and EASA, which are involved on an equal level (EUR 550 million each). Faced with blockages at EAS, the Commission has been threatening for several months to launch the venture alone. The common enterprise council should be able to function following the EAS agreement and nominate its director. European sources have indicated that, the Commission had proposed Manuel Gordillo (Spain) and is very wary about the candidate suggested by Germany, who it believes does not have the necessary qualities. According to the German-Italian agreement, the president of the private consortium, Galileo Industries, would also be a German.
Already in January, Spain together with Germany, was responsible for the cancelling of the first political agreement at ESA (EUROPE 8 January p 10).
On Tuesday, two German MEPs had welcomed the agreement reached between Italy and Germany. Christian Democrat Brigitte Langenhagen, Parliament Rapporteur on the dossier, had noted that the German proposals of compromise had for a long while come up against a wall on the Italian side. Galileo must above all make Europe independent of the US GPs system, she pointed out, noting that in crisis periods, like the current crisis, "we do not know if or when the GPs can be made artificially imprecise or even totally switched off". Ms Langenhagen, who had launched an EP petition in favour of continuing the project, had warned that without a clear political commitment, "one cannot expect a commitment on the part of the industry". Social Democrat Ulrich Stockmann had insisted that the deadlock had been broken thanks to cooperation between Germany, Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom, and that the road was now clear to answer many technological challenges "in old Europe and in the world", this being an allusion to the remarks by Donald Rumsfeld on "Old Europe".