Scandalous.
Because no private concern will touch Galileo with a bargepole, we've got to bail this fiasco out.
Grrrr
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http://www.insidegn
EC Proposes Big Changes for GSA within Galileo Program
April 20, 2009
A proposal now before the European Parliament and Council of the
European Union would complete the transformation of the European GNSS
Supervisory Authority (GSA) from the leading executive agency for the
Galileo program into a diminished subsidiary of the European
Commission (EC).
That pre-eminent role, envisioned under the strategy of a
public-private partnership (PPP) abandoned more than two years ago,
would have seen the GSA sign and oversee a contract with a private
consortium building and operating the Galileo system and its precursor
European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS).
Instead, under the terms of EC Communication 139 released March 24,
the GSA would be renamed the GNSS Agency with the EC holding veto
power over its administrative board and the agency’s primary mission
reduced to market research and promotion of Galileo as well as
conducting security audits. On April 1, ownership of the EGNOS
infrastructure was transferred to the EC, and a Brussels-based
company, the European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP SaS), was
entrusted with operation of the system.
Galileo is now being developed as a fully public procurement with a
€3.4 billion budget. The European Space Agency (ESA) is acting as the
technical design authority and prime contractor.
The EC characterizes its communication as an effort to remove
contradictions and ambiguities between the 2004 regulation
establishing the GSA and a 2008 regulation outlining the public
procurement for Galileo’s deployment. Although the 2008 regulation
“implicitly and comprehensively amended the Supervisory Authority’s
responsibilities, it had no impact on its internal organisation, and
the Commission’s influence in this area continues to be very limited,”
says the March 24 communication. “
“In order to ensure that the Authority acts while respecting the
‘Commission’s role as manager of the programmes’ and ‘in accordance
with guidelines issued by the Commission,’ as is now provided for by
Regulation (EC) No 683/2008,” the communication continues, “it is
necessary to make changes to increase the Commission’s influence
within the Authority’s internal organisation.”
Although the communication says the reorganized GSA would continue as
a “Community Agency” — that is, one under the control of European
member states rather than the EC, the EU’s executive branch — the
far-reaching changes that it proposes would profoundly alter its
political and legal status.
These changes include giving the EC representative on the GSA/GNSS
Agency’s administrative board a vote equal to half of that body’s
votes, with the 27 representatives of the member states having the
other half.
Moreover, the term of the agency’s executive director would be
shortened to four years from the current five. Under that provision,
the administrative board would have to decide by this July whether to
renew the term of Pedro Pedreira, GSA executive director appointed to
the post in July 2005, which might be a very uncertain prospect given
the communication’
present GSA leadership.
The 2004 regulation gave final authority to the GSA’s executive
director, “who shall be completely independent in the exercise of
his/her duties, without prejudice to the respective competencies of
the Commission and the Administrative Board.”
The proposed new regulation replaces that description with the
following: “The Agency shall be managed by its Executive Director, who
shall carry out his duties under the supervision of the Administrative
Board in accordance with the guidelines provided to the Agency by the
Commission.”
The communication calls for abolition of the GSA’s Scientific and
Technical Committee, which had charged with delivering opinions on
technical questions or on proposals involving major changes in the
design of the European GNSS system and making recommendations on the
modernization of the system. Those responsibilities have been moved —
along with many of the GSA’ technical staff — to the EC or to the ESA
Evolutions project that is investigating the technical design for a
next-generation system with €105 million in funding from ESA members
over the next two years.
The EC’s proposal would also replace the GSA’s System Safety and
Security Committee with a Security Accreditation Committee for
European GNSS Systems, chaired by an EC representative and with
members from the EU nations. With oversight from this committee, the
GNSS Agency would be charged with setting up a Galileo Security Center
that would begin operation in 2012.
The new regulation has had its first reading in the European
Parliament and been referred to committee.
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