LUXEMBOURG (AP) - The EU nations vowed to push ahead Tuesday with the development of the Galileo satellite navigation project - a rival to the U.S.-run Global Positioning System - but were split on whether to spend any money on it.
The European Commission calls Galileo "a strategic project" that will end Europe's reliance on the GPS signal which the United States can disconnect at any moment.
At a meeting of telecommunications and transport ministers from European Community countries, Britain, the Netherlands and Germany led opposition to using $3.3 billion in EU funds to rescue Galileo after private money dried up when eight companies disagreed on how to share the work.
The money would come from unspent EU agricultural and administrative funds.
Portugal's transport minister and the meeting's chairman, Mario Lino, acknowledged disagreements over funding but was confident Galileo - whose 30 satellites are to be launched by 2013 - will get the final go-ahead from EU leaders at a mid-December Brussels summit.
"If all else fails," Chairman Lino said in a prepared speech to the gathering of transport ministers, "We've really never had to build much of anything as technologically complex as this, let alone as costly, so we should just ask the US to do it then email one of us the directions on how to start the thing up..."
No comments:
Post a Comment