Insight
Moving on after Galileo – lessons (to be) learnt by Sophia Besch 28 June 2018
The EU and the UK have not been able to come to an agreement over Britain’s participation in the Galileo programme. This could either set a dangerous precedent for Brexit defence negotiations in the future – or it could serve as a wake-up call for EU and UK negotiators. Galileo is Europe’s own global navigation satellite system, planned to be up and running by 2020. While Galileo’s basic positioning services will be open to all, the EU is also developing the ‘Public Regulated Service’ (PRS), an encrypted capability reserved for EU member-states’ militaries and governments. The encrypted signals of the PRS will ensure that the navigation service remains functional even if an adversary jams all other Galileo transmissions. The European Commission has proposed a highly restricted role for the UK in Galileo. Like any other third country, the UK will be given observer status in agencies responsible for the EU’s space programme, but will have no power to make decisions. The UK will be able to negotiate access to PRS. As a third country, however, it will not be involved in any ‘upstream’ PRS activity, which means the UK will play no part in generating or encrypting the PRS signal. Finally, UK defence firms will be allowed to bid for some of the Galileo-related contracts, but cannot be involved in the design or development of security-related and PRS elements. The UK is rejecting the EU’s offer for two main reasons. First, the government is not prepared to simply be a user of PRS. UK companies have been heavily involved in the development of Galileo: Surrey Satellite Technology, a British subsidiary of Airbus, makes Galileo’s navigation electronics. And a UK subsidiary of the Canadian firm CGI is developing the encryption technology for PRS. The government has argued that, if the UK is shut out of the development of PRS technology, and has no say over the future development of the service or its governance, Galileo will no longer fulfil the UK’s security needs. Second, the British government says that if UK-based companies were no longer able to bid for Galileo contracts, this would weaken the business case for UK participation in Galileo altogether. Because Britain considers the EU’s offer insufficient both in terms of PRS access and industry contracts, the UK is looking into building
CER INSIGHT: moving on after galileo – lessons (to be) learnt 28 June 2018
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