Spain holding up European satellite project

The prestigious European satellite project, Galileo, is still stuck in financial problems. A meeting in the European Space Agency, ESA on Friday (25 April) failed to resolve a dispute between Spain and other countries that could have released 550 million in funding from the European Space Agency to the project.

The Spaniards fear being marginalised on the project. Of the 550 million euro from the ESA, Germany, Italy, France and the UK would contribute 70 per cent, while Spain would only contribute 9 per cent.

Gilles Gantelet, a spokesman for EU transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio warned, according to the Financial Times Deutschland, that the whole project could collapse if no solution was found this side of the summer.

European independence of US system

The multi-billion Euro navigation satellite system is intended to make Europe independent of the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and was agreed among EU ministers last year, in March 2002. The plan is to send 30 satellites into space by 2008 and the European industry was eagerly anticipating the creation of 100,000 new jobs.

The total cost of the Galileo system will be 3.6bn euros. Ministers agreed to release 450m euro to fund the project, in addition to the 100m euro that had already been authorised. Together with 550m euro from the European Space Agency (ESA), this money should be enough to see the project through to the end of 2005, after which the satellites will be launched. The private sector is expected to provide an additional investment of 2.5bn euro.

Military use not excluded

Whilst European ministers have agreed that Galileo is a civil initiative and will be managed by civil authorities, it will be up to the administrators to decide who can use the navigation services once the satellites have been launched. It does not exclude the possibility that the military could be granted access to some of the facilities.

One concern of American and NATO officials has been that some of the frequencies, which are being considered for high-security uses of Galileo, could overlap with those of the US system that both the US and NATO want to use for military operations.