The Joint Sky and Space Committee of the European Parliament has presented a petition signed by over 200 European and national members of parliament to the Council and European Commission, urging Heads of State and Government to launch GALILEO as soon as possible.

Since 2001, the European Parliament has supported the vast majority the European Commission proposals aimed at providing Europe with its own satellites navigation system. GALILEO is a large-scale programme that will allow for the delivery of a wide range of services and applications in the fields of transport, earth-monitoring, public safety, risk prevention and response to natural disasters.

The petition comes in the wake of an agreement by Italy and Germany on their respective contributions to GALILEO. The agreement, which sees Italy playing a leading role in project engineering while Germany will oversee space aspects, paves the way for the GALILEO launch. It also ends an extended period of wrangling among GALILEO partners that had some worried the project was foundering.

Candidate Countries invited

The first GALILEO conference for an enlarged Europe will take place in Warsaw on 19-20 May 2003, bringing together representatives of institutions, service providers, industry and research, from both candidate countries and Member States.