The EC iron out the last few creases in Galileo plans

The EC announced on Friday that the Galileo SatNav project now has the unanimous approval of all EU member states and that funding has been approved for the project.

After a year of beating around the bush it seems all the details have finally been laid down on paper with regard to funding for the Galileo 30 satellite navigation project, which the European commission (EC) hope will offer a European alternative to the US GPS system.

Funding for the project fell short recently and so, the EC proposed they spend some of the extra money they had lying around from the farming, science and tech budgets. Most of this money was due to go to the UK, Germany and Holland.

Needless to say they were none too pleased about this arrangement but, being the good people they are they relented and it looked like it was finally full steam ahead for Galileo.

Until Spain decided that it too should have a ground control station. After all, why should Germany and Italy get all the stations ? Exactly.

Spain was eventually soothed by the offer of their own station as long as they agreed to fund it themselves. Oh and the fact that they were outvoted 26-1. Yep, that’ll do it, alright.

The EC hopes to have Galileo finished and operational by 2013.