TELECOMMUNICATIONS : MOBILE SATELLITE SERVICES: EP INSISTS ON ITS ROLE.

While calling on the EU to quicken its pace in the adoption of the project on mobile satellite services (2GHz band, so-called S band'), the European Parliament wants to have input during the Community selection of candidates for radio frequencies reserved for these services. "There are holes in the current text," stressed the rapporteur, Fiona Hall (ALDE, UK), on 19 December in the Industry Committee.

Her idea is to replace the former comitology procedure, which the project is based on, by the new procedure "with scrutiny rights," which gives more power to MEPs. That would be a "catastrophe," according to satellite operators and their terrestrial partners, because, in this case, the legal investigation period in the EP can take from one to three months. "The decision on MSS [mobile satellite services] could, in the future, represent a model for granting parts of the spectrum," said Hall. She therefore invited the EP "to try again," given the "very political" nature of the spectrum problem.

Jean-Pierre Audy (EPP-ED, France) holds the same opinion. "We really must look at things seriously," he pleaded, believing that the EU had "ridiculed" itself with the problems over the European satellite navigation programme Galileo.

Hall intends to bring certain technical elements, currently placed in the project's annexes, into the body of the text, and therefore allow MEPs to give their opinion. She will insist on public services amongst the selection criteria for candidates.

The Commission judged it "completely legitimate that the EP looks to maintain...

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