GMES Main Issue for 3rd Space Council

The third meeting of the Space Council – a joint and concomitant meeting of the ESA Council at ministerial level and of the European Union Competitiveness Council (Internal Market/ Industry/ Research) – was held on Monday 28 November in Brussels.

At this third meeting, chaired jointly by Lord Sainsbury of Turville, UK Minister for Science and current Chair of the EU Competitiveness Council, and Secretary of State Georg Wilhelm Adamowitsch, representing the German Minister for Economy and Technology Michael Glos, current Chair of the ESA Council at Ministerial level, the Ministers stressed the strategic importance of the initiative for Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). The objective of GMES is to provide Europe with reliable, timely information on environmental and security issues, on a sustainable basis, in support of public policy-makers’ needs.

The Ministers emphasised the importance of maintaining an autonomous European Earth observation capacity to support political decision-making and the significance of the international dimension of GMES and its status as the main European contribution to the worldwide Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).

Implementation of GMES will see the early deployment of three fast-track services for Emergency Response, Land Monitoring, and Marine Services, due to enter the operational phase by 2008. Other services will follow according to a deployment plan covering the years 2009-2013.

GMES is an EU-led initiative. Its space component will be developed by ESA. ESA Member States will subscribe the ESA programme covering the development of the GMES space component at the ESA Council meeting at ministerial level next week. In parallel, the European Commission intends to allocate a major portion of the Seventh Framework Programme funding earmarked for space to GMES and, out of this allocated amount, to fund both GMES services and a significant proportion of the budget for the GMES Space Component until 2013.

In order to efficiently ensure the continuity of data needed to establish the GMES operational services and to avoid duplication, the Ministers requested that the best use be made of existing and planned satellite and in-situ systems at European and national level. To this end, they invited national Agencies and European organisations (such as Eumetsat) which already possess or are in the process of building up assets and capacities which could be valuable for GMES to make their capacities available to the GMES initiative under appropriate conditions. A group of experts has been set up to assess the most suitable structure for the longer-term governance and implementation of GMES.

The third meeting of the Space Council was also attended by Mr Günter Verheugen, European Commission Vice-President, in charge of enterprise, industry, competitiveness and space matters, and Mr Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of the European Space Agency.