GALILEO : MEPS SUBSCRIBE TO PUBLIC PROCUREMENT RULES.

The European Parliament's Industry Committee subscribes to the main principles that the EU Council of Ministers wishes to see applied to the European programme of satellite radionavigation, Galileo, particularly with regard to the rules concerning public procurement procedures. It adopted, on 29 January, a series of amendments to the proposal relating to the further implementation of the programme, presented by the European Commission in September 2007 following its decision to abandon the public-private partnership scheme originally foreseen. These amendments generally resume the main principles on which the Council of Transport Ministers had agreed in December, with some differences however. Informal negotiations will now begin with the Council, with the aim of quickly reaching an agreement at first reading (co-decision) on a case which has dragged on for too long. Moreover, to allow itself the opportunity to fine-tune things, the Industry Committee has postponed the final vote on the report to 18 February, in Strasbourg (only the amendments have been adopted at this stage). The transfer to the plenary session is scheduled for March, also in Strasbourg. The rapporteur is the Hungarian MEP Etelka Barsi-Pataky (EPP-ED).

The first point of difference with the Council is that MEPs are of the opinion that this authority - whose principal mission was to be the conceding authority with regard to the private concessionaires initially intended for the Galileo deployment phase - is now redundant. In its proposal, however, the Commission maintains the role of technical assistance for the authority and the Council, in its conclusions adopted in December 2007, considers that it should continue to assume responsibility for technical certification, market preparation and the marketing of the system among others. The Industry Committee, however, starts from the principle that these tasks can be taken on by the Commission or by the European Space Agency (ESA).

MEPs also want guarantees on the possibilities they will have to supervise the programme's performance. This...