European Union ministers have refused to give up on EU global positioning service Galileo, telling the European Commission to draw up detailed proposals by September for initial funding by taxpayers. While leaving an option to pull the plug, the EU Council of Ministers has backed a communiqué that "reaffirms the value of Galileo as a key project", and accepts its deployment will require "additional public funding".
Ministers also scrapped the current concession negotiations, which have
sown discord between potential private contractors. The talks "have failed and should be ended" the council ruled. The EC had previously proposed exclusively public funding of the establishment and commissioning of the sat-nav network, with private partners helping its operation after a launch in 2012.
Ministers called on Brussels to draft "detailed alternative proposals for the financing, including all possible options of public funding, based on additional thorough assessments of costs, risks, revenues and timetables."
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