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EU ministers fund Galileo GPS plan with unused agricultural subsidies
Page 9
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THE FUTURE OF the European Union (EU) global positioning satellite project Galileo has been all but secured with the EU council of Ministers agreeing to raise an additional €2.4bn (1.7bn) to launch the system. Late on Friday (23 November) the council agreed to divert €1.6bn (i1.15bn) of unspent agricultural subsidies to meet the lion's share of these costs.
Galileo will now be operational in 2013,five years after the original launch date of 2008.
The package was negotiated with the European Parliament. Budgets spokesman KyOsti Virrankoski says: "We ended up in a severe situation.We had to decide whether we continued with this projector not." The Galileo satellite network is designed to provide transport users with navigational services that are more accurate than those currently available through the American GPS system. However, progress towards building the EU system has been stalled by rows over Galileo's construction and service contracts.