E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

EU clinches unanimous Galileo deal
BRUSSELS - European Union nations reached unanimous agreement on Friday on the future of the Galileo satellite navigation project, after allaying concerns from Spain. Galileo is a long-delayed European project to build a satellite network to challenge the dominance of the US-built Global Positioning System (GOS), which is widely used in satellite navigation devices.

“The presidency announces that it was possible to have the agreement of all the delegations, without exception, on Galileo,” said Portuguese Transport Minister Mario Lino, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency. “We have always thought that it was best to be united on a project that is so important for Europe,” he said.

In a move overnight that deeply angered Spain, Portugal changed the voting system to reach a deal on the flagship project, allowing a qualified majority vote, rather than the unanimous decision that is usually required.

Under the deal sealed late Thursday, Spain would play host to a ”Safety of Life” ground centre dedicated to civil protection, in particular in the area of maritime, air and rail security. But it had demanded that, like Germany and Italy, it be allowed to host a control centre for the future 30-satellite scheme aimed at showcasing Europe’s hi-tech know-how and due to come into operation in 2013.

Under the compromise reached Friday, its “Safety of Life” centre would “be qualified” as a control centre by 2013, allowing Madrid to supervise operation of the satellites and their transmissions to Earth. “The Spanish centre, once it is up and running from a technical point of view, would act as a control centre along with the others” in Germany and Italy, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot explained.
Just dividing the boodle, it seems. Why Galileo is so important to the Euros as anything other than a high-tech, expensive make-work project isn't clear.
The controversy is just the latest in a series that has dogged the system. Work on Galileo, a project already running five years behind the initial schedule, stalled this year as cost over-runs piled up, private contractors bickered and member states lobbied for their own industrial interests. As the original public-private partnership involving a consortium of eight European companies fell apart, the European Commission recommended that the project should be relaunched using public money entirely.

Meanwhile the US military is already working on super-powerful updates to its GPS technology to try to trump Galileo before it even gets up in the air, according to military experts there.
Posted by: Steve White 2007-12-01
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=210606