GALILEO

|GALILEO as a major technological, economic and political challenge

|A system that both competes with and complements the American GPS system

|The future of GNSS: GALILEO + GPS

|Unquestionable economic viability

|European GNSS: A two-step approach

GALILEO as a major technological, economic and political challenge

GALILEO is a technological advance likely to revolutionise society in the same way that the mobile phone has done in recent years while also heralding the development of a new generation of universal services.

The European Councils at Cologne, Feira, Nice, Stockholm, Laeken and Barcelona all emphasised the strategic importance of this programme. GALILEO will afford considerable advantages in many sectors of the economy. In road and rail transport, for example, it will make it possible to predict and manage journey times, or, thanks to automated vehicle guidance systems, help reduce traffic jams and cut the number of road accidents. However, although transport by road, rail, air and sea is the example most frequently quoted, satellite radionavigation is also increasingly of benefit to fisheries and agriculture, oil prospecting, defence and civil protection activities, building and public works, etc. In the field of telecommunications, allied with other new technologies such as GSM or UMTS, GALILEO will increase the potential to provide positioning information as well as to provide combined services of a very high level.

The role played by satellite global positioning systems in our everyday lives is set to grow considerably. The real impact of satellite global positioning on society and industrial development, as is the case for all major technical innovations, will become clear only gradually, even though many practical applications are already possible. While there is no question but that the future of guidance systems involves satellite radionavigation, there are sectors other than the transport sector which are already dependent on this new technology, even if they are not aware of the fact. This is true of the financial sector when it comes to determining the exact time of bank transactions. Some analysts regard satellite radionavigation as an invention that is as significant in its way as that of the watch: in the same way that no one nowadays can ignore the time of day, in the future no one will be able to do without knowing their precise location.

Having control of the satellite constellation technology which is central to the system means having control of the many industrial applications made possible thanks to satellite positioning. The European Union cannot afford not to become involved in what, it is already clear, will be one of the main sectors of industry in the twenty-first century. That would mean becoming dependent on systems and technologies developed outside Europe for applications vital to the running of the society of tomorrow.