| Galileo Update | |
European authorities urged to boost GNSS Research
Key European Industry and University representatives rallied in Brussels to stress their deep concerns with regard to the future of GNSS Research in Europe and to celebrate the launch of a Manifesto for “a More Committed Europe towards the Development of GNSS Applications”.
Funding originally allocated within the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to support GNSS applications development has been removed in 2007 to fill in a gap in the Galileo infrastructure development finances. Today, there is no more budget beyond the up-coming third call, to foster GNSS R&D within FP7. Such a situation is very critical as it may prevent many European Universities, Research organisations and industries, and in particular smaller companies to pursue their research and development activities towards EGNOS and Galileo applications. The impact may be disastrous not only for the competitiveness of European stakeholders vis-à-vis their American and Asian competitors, but it might also simply divert the attention of users’ communities and applications’ developers towards non European GNSS services available or to be operational soon.
European Research Players have decided to join together to sound the alarm and heighten national and European decision makers at a time when they are deciding Community Research funding for the coming years.
“If a solution is not rapidly found, Europe runs the risk to loose the momentum created by the EGNOS and Galileo infrastructures and thus to miss a unique opportunity to boost European downstream industry growth and to develop new businesses in Europe” pointed out Mr G. Ueland, President of Kongsberg Seatex and President of Galileo Services.
“An ambitious European GNSS R&D Programme is required now as the GNSS technology is evolving fast and new advanced applications will be needed for the future” added Prof. G. Leon, Vice-Rector for Research, Technical University of Madrid.
Mr P. Campagne, CEO of FDC and Coordinator of OREGIN also stressed that “EGNOS market take-up would not have happened in most of the application domains without FP6 and FP7. Considering the competition, Galileo needs even more R&D support to become a success for European Economy”.
The Manifesto urges the European Commission, the European Council, the European Parliament and the Member States of the European Union to consider increasing dramatically Community funding for GNSS applications R&D in order:
– To foster the development of EGNOS and Galileo applications,
– To leverage European industry and Research organisations uptake in the GNSS global environment,
– And thus to guarantee the opportunity for Europe to capitalise on public investment devoted to the European GNSS infrastructures.
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