International

The Chair of the Multi-Annual Budget Committee said last week that people who are looking to make savings in the European budget should first of all say just where that could be effected. This statement demonstrated once again how difficult it is to get my colleagues in the European Parliament to understand that you can’t keep chucking money around in Brussels when at the national level the most cold-hearted austerity measures are being imposed, and have been ever since the 1980s. We in the SP have made a whole series of proposals to combat EU wastage, one of which could in one fell blow save billions: halt the development of a redundant European GPS system called Galileo.

Galileo stands for a satellite navigation system such as people use in their cars, but which is also of great importance to aircraft in calculating their position. There is already such a system, which many people will know from their cars or mobiles, the GPS system. The fine thing about GPS is that it’s free. The only thing is that it was developed by the US and so for Europe access to this system is dependent on the Americans. This was one of the reasons to start developing our own European system, with our own satellites. Initially we were told we’d need thirty of them, but this was eventually scaled back to twenty-two, an expensive means to avoid dependence on the US in this matter.

There were also other reasons why Galileo was initiated in the year 2000. We would be able to put a product on the market that could be taken up by other countries, which would mean profits and jobs, or so it was thought. It took so long, however, before agreement was reached on all of the procedural and technical issues, that countries such as China, India and Japan have in the meantime developed their own systems, so it’s extremely improbable that Galileo will be used outside Europe.

Meanwhile the costs have grown enormously. Originally the private sector was supposed to help pay these, but because of all the uncertainty one firm after another has pulled out, with the result that the whole amount must be covered by the taxpayer. Estimates from the British think-tank Open Europe indicate a total cost of €22.2 billion, as opposed to an original projection of €7.7 billion, of which only €2.6 was to be paid out of our taxes with the rest being found by participating private sector corporations.

It’s always hard for Brussels to accept that an initiative has proved a failure and to draw conclusions from this. In my view we should put a stop to the whole project, but at the very least the Commission should provide the European Parliament with an updated cost-benefit analysis. There’s a fine old Dutch saying which translates as ‘better to turn back halfway than get completely lost’. That’s what applies here in spades, I would say. Cutting our losses would save billions.