Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-04-24-Speech-2-396"
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"en.20070424.50.2-396"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, I welcome the opportunity to have this discussion tonight on Galileo, but it gives me a very strange sensation of being in a time warp.
It was seven months ago that we last had a plenary discussion on this topic and it is very alarming to realise that no progress has been made since then. On that occasion in September I expressed my concern, as did other Members, at the spiralling cost of the project. We need to be brutally honest: no taboos, as the Commissioner said. Galileo has the potential to be a great European project, but technology moves very fast. There has been so much delay that the point could be reached where it is simply not worthwhile doing any more. Galileo is dependent on revenue and, if it offers no added value, then no one will pay to use it.
I listened with great interest to what Commissioner Barrot said. It seems that something which has at last changed is the Council and Commission’s willingness to take firm action. I very much welcome the 10 May deadline and the insistence that substantial, immediate progress be made by then on the heads of terms. I also welcome the undertaking to explore alternatives for delivering the project, but I am alarmed at the possibility of an interim solution dependent on the public purse.
Finally, the Commission has said that it may have to revisit some fundamental aspects of its earlier assumptions and approach. I would ask the Commissioner whether with hindsight he would concede that it was a mistake to agree in July 2005 to the merging of the two consortia. It seems to me that this was the point when the Commission lost all leverage. Would he now agree that it is the spur of competition and the existence of alternatives which is most likely to keep a public/private partnership on schedule and in budget?"@en1
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