GALILEO - SAME PROGRAMME, DIFFERENT LANGUAGE?

摘要

The European Galileo programme is a civil satellite navigation system. It was born out of Europe's desire to have a programme independent of the United States' Global Positioning System. A joint European Union and European Space Agency programme, it is to be funded by public-private partnership. However, the difficulty that ESA in particular faces is that Galileo clearly has a military dimension. The language of the agency's convention states that it should only engage in activities of a peaceful nature, but there is a strong case to be made that it should now set this concept aside to fully reflect new global security threats and the requirements of conducting modern military campaigns by openly managing programmes of both a civilian and defence dimension. With the pursuit of a European Security and Defence Policy and a Common Foreign and Security Policy, and despite the concerns expressed by the United States regarding the programme, there may well be an obligation for Europe to develop technology with a dual-use dimension such as Galileo not only for commercial reasons but to enhance the security of its citizens. However, the case for the wider applications of such a system may be diminished if there is a lack of open debate regarding the true capabilities of Galileo.