Brussels, 09/07/2008 (Agence Europe) -President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering (EPP-ED, Germany) and the French Secretary of State for European Affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet, acting on behalf of the French Presidency of the EU, signed, on Wednesday 9 July during the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the regulation on the continuation of the European satellite radionavigation (GNNS) programmes EGNOS and Galileo. The Council adopted the regulation by written procedure on 3 July, further to the agreement between the Parliament and the Council in April. The regulation is soon to be published in the Official Journal of the EU, which will allow the official launch of the programme and the setting in place of provisions regarding its governance. The Galileo system, which is exclusively for civil purposes, is set to be operational in 2013 and will comprise 30 satellites and ground stations providing positioning information to users. It will provide five types of navigation services: open service (free of charge), life-saving, commercial, public (reserved for government use) and search and rescue. (A.By/trans.fl)