Galileo project is ready for deployment, says Commission 

In a Communication adopted on 6 October, the Commission announced that the conditions to launch the deployment and operational phases of Galileo are now met: 

• Sufficient private sector finance is in place to fund the subsequent stages
• The Council adopted two decisions establishing the necessary structure for the management of the system (see EurActiv, 18 June 2004)
• The pressing issue of Galileo's interoperability with the US GPS system is now resolved after months of negotiations with the signing of a bilateral agreement (see  EurActiv, 27 February 2004 ).

The Galileo Joint Undertaking, a body set up by the Comission and the European space agency to manage the development phase of the Galileo Programme, delivered an evaluation report of the two consortia bidding to run Galileo, Eurely and iNavSat to on 5 October. The report confirmed the commercial and financial viability of the system and related set of services and that t he Transport Council's objective of funding the deplyment of phase of Galileo with two-thirds of private and one third of public money will  be reached. The final decision on which international satellite consortium will build and run the its Galileo satellite navigation system has been postponed until the end of January, a month later than originally planned. The choice has been put off because the bids from the two competing consortia were so similar, said the spokesman for the Galileo Joint Undertaking. The successful bidder will have to find at least two-thirds of the 2.2 billion euro start-up cost. 

China officially joined Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system project after the country signed an agreement with the European Union on 9 October in Beijing. Under the agreement, China will provide two hundred million Euros for the project. So far, this is China's largest scientific project with foreign countries. Other international partners will bring participate in Galileo 's development. Israel has already signed an agreement and discussions are under way with India, Russia, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Australia.

If all goes as planned, the Galileo satellite navigation system will be smoothly moving closer to reality. In 2006 and 2007, the deployment phase will be launched with the manufacture and launch of satellites and commercial exploitation will start from 2008.