Tag: space

The European Commission will propose on Monday (4 April) to strengthen the EU's space policy with the aim of increasing the bloc's capability "to pursue independent missions". 

All member states are politically committed to promoting more EU action on space, the French Presidency said after a two-day informal meeting of the bloc's ministers for space. But the issue of where the money for this increased ambition will actually come from will only be discussed later.

"Galileo is an essential project and we don't have the option of giving up. Now the question is to what extent we can fund it from public funds," said Commissioner Verheugen, as he presented the EU's new space policy on 26 April.

Russia and the EU have signed a co-operation agreement on space technology and activities. The high-level dialogue is expected to give a boost to the Galileo-GLONASS agreement.

The Competitiveness Council will discuss, on 7 June 2005, a number of FP7 proposal related issues raised by the Luxembourg Presidency.

The Commission proposes to more than double the current EU research budget to an average of 9.6 billion euros a year (67 billion in 7 years) instead of the current yearly average of 3.8 billion euros. The big budget is in line with the expected key contribution the FP7 is designed to make to the relaunched Lisbon strategy.

Space is a "key instrument for a comprehensive approach to security", says a report (published on 22 March 2005) by a panel of 150 space and security experts.

Monitoring water and air quality, forecasting crop production, improving airline safety, preventing forest fires, managing crisis and humanitarian aid and preventing fraud in agriculture are just a few examples of direct benefits from satellites observing the Earth.

Russia and Europe will jointly construct a launch site for Russian Soyuz rockets at French Guiana's Kourou space centre. Lift-off is due in 2007.

The EU's space programme, set to be defined by the end of 2005, will bring together all major European stakeholders. Commissioner Verheugen has described it as a "huge leap forward".