A few months ago this column predicted an agreement would be reached on a formal European Space Policy in 2007. This prediction came true with a decision reached in Brussels May 22 by the Council of the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA) in their fourth joint meeting since 2004.

This 4th Space Council decision came with a bit of a thud, however, because only a few days earlier the Commission was forced to change direction on a key program, concluding that development of the Galileo satellite navigation project had stalled.
In the lead up to the Space Council, the European Commission produced an April paper on space policy which outlined 12 key actions for European policymakers, including new research and development projects, coordinating EU member state programs and developing a joint strategy for international relations in space. An impact assessment accompanying the paper described the importance and size of the European space industry, including satellite applications, launch vehicles and space science and stressed that the manufacturing and service industries need a stable and clear regulatory framework — a message that cannot be repeated too often!

This impact assessment also dubbed Galileo “the first flagship of the European Space Policy.”
But the satellite navigation program has been troubled since its launch in April 2001. The framework for Galileo was to be a “public-private partnership” involving a consortium of private European companies. Public institutions have invested 2.5 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in development since the program’s inception, with the consortium in charge of development expected to fund two-thirds of the cost and recoup its investment by operating the system and charging fees.

In the short time between the April paper and the 4th Space Council, however, the European Commission was confronted with the need to reassess the entire program. That reassessment, laid out in a May 16 paper entitled “Galileo at a Cross-Road,” was harsh.

The Commission found that the program had accumulated a delay of five years from its initial schedule; development was facing substantial delays and cost overruns; technological complexity had been underestimated; and under current conditions, deployment could not be anticipated before 2014 or later.

The harshest language was directed at the industrial structuring of the program. The current industrial organizations, according to the European Commission, “are neither efficient nor capable of reaching decisions….” In fact, negotiations with the consortium responsible for the private input to the program showed no “credible evidence of a commitment to proceed.”

The European Commission remains convinced that Europe needs its own satellite navigation system to avoid depending on foreign systems, but on the basis of its assessment, the Commission invited the Council and the European Parliament to end negotiations with the industrialists and shift to public funding of the deployment stage. The original technical plan for a 30-satellite constellation should be retained to avoid crippling delays, but now the proposed system would be deployed and owned by the EU, with private involvement in operations beginning in 2010 and full service provision starting by end of 2012.

Substantial questions will remain even with what the European Commission calls the new profile for Galileo. If the EU is to own the system at the outset, new tools for governing the system must be developed. The Commission is talking of public investments of billions of additional euros, which may require new financing mechanisms. And these issues must be juggled as the program continues toward the 2012 target date.

The resolution that came from the 4th Space Council does not respond to the May paper, which was issued less than a week before the Council meeting. Instead, the resolution from the meeting contains a fairly bland statement supporting joint efforts of European institutions, ESA and industry to establish a “commercially sustainable global civil navigation satellite system under European civil control.” Galileo is mentioned by name a few additional times, but it is not a focus and no longer appears to be a first flagship.

Europe now has a space policy but needs to revamp and redefine what was to be the first element of that policy.
For further reading on European Space Policy, the European Commission recently updated a useful index page at: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/space/off_docs_en.html.