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Wednesday, 19 November 2008 - Strasbourg OJ edition

European Space Policy: How to bring space down to earth (debate)
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  Etelka Barsi-Pataky, on behalf of the PPE-DE Group.(HU) Thank you for the floor, Mr President. The title of our parliamentary decision is ‘How to bring space down to earth’. Ladies and gentlemen, the average citizen of Europe makes use of 50 satellites a day. The utilisation of space has quite imperceptibly come to be part of daily life. The question is: can Europe cooperate in that process, can it actively shape the utilisation of space?

A few remarks are in order. Space is our common and global asset. Therefore, international cooperation is of paramount importance to Europe. However, Europe can participate meaningfully only if it has established its autonomy in the political, technological and operational fields. Hence, it has relevance for Parliament.

In light of the global financial and already partly economic crisis, we now see clearly that high-technology initiatives such as space utilisation add a significant edge to our competitiveness.

Moreover, given the challenges we face and the related tasks to be tackled, we rely increasingly on space technology, for example, to understand and monitor climate change or achieve security by means of defence, the prevention of increasingly frequent catastrophes or the provision of ever broader communication and navigation services.

Thus, we are dealing with strategic questions here. The European Parliament wishes to play a constructive part in this process, primarily by fostering a structured dialogue between the EU and government institutions. In our opinion, this will provide all Member States with the opportunity to participate and gain open and fair access.

Galileo, our joint European project, was a pioneer in many respects. To name but a few: it set up the operational model of the Galileo Interinstitutional Panel to create closer cooperation, and in the case of larger projects, we were able to secure joint funding built into the Community budget. This is only the beginning, however. The Galileo programme, as Commissioner Verheugen mentioned, secured the participation of SMEs because we know by now that spin-off companies are the ones most capable of accomplishing great things in the high-tech world.

The European People’s Party and European Democrats have made countless proposals, concerning, in part, our industrial policy where we still have a lot of catching up to do before it might serve as a solid base. Furthermore, we have to strengthen our role in research and development. Besides, these competencies are essential for defence and security policy as well. In this way, the European space policy will come to be part of Europe’s identity. Thank you for the floor.

 
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