EU Referendum

One did not exactly have to be a rocket scientist to predict, as I did last night, that the (British) MSM would ignore the latest developments in the Galileo saga. One should also note, I suppose, that The Independent did not include the EU's satellite navigation system in its list of 50 "benefits" of the EU.

But, if the British media are in ostrich mode, not so today's edition of Le Monde which has run both a news piece and a leader.

A taste of the where the newspaper is coming from can be discerned from the news headline, which proclaims: "Europeans try to avoid the Galileo 'shipwreck'", with the leader not offering much comfort either, noting, "After Airbus, Galileo."

The symbolic nature of the Galileo programme is not missed. It was to embody the ambitions of l'Europe puissance (the Europe of power) but now, the paper says, it is going through an unprecedented crisis. It was to become one of the industrial emblems of Europe but, if nothing is done, it is likely to become an additional illustration of the European breakdown – just at the time when the Union is on the point of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.

Despite the predictability of the British media, seeing how much is riding on the Galileo project, it is still perplexing that the issue is so comprehensively ignored. There seems to be more here than the general amateurism and parochialism of your average British journalist, although the precise reason for the hang-up is difficult to work out. Perhaps it is that rooted objection the media has to keeping the public informed.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: galileo

According to Heise online, the EU's Galileo navigation system has been clawed back from the precipice and will live to see another day.

As we left it, the companies forming the development consortium for the system were refusing to incorporate a company which could take the project forward.

This left the EU commission without a formal partner and no entity which could order the satellites needed to set up the system, leaving the commission to consider handing responsibility for the system to a public body – thereby virtually ensuring its demise.

If they are good at nothing else, however, the "colleagues" need take lessons from no one in brinkmanship. Thus, yesterday, the consortium capitulated and the separate companies signed the articles of incorporation of a registered company.

However, this is but one small step, and the problems affecting Galileo are by no means resolved. Forbes cites Michele Cercone, spokesman for EU transport commissioner Jacques "Wheel" Barrot, saying that the consortium's move is a "commitment, not a result".

The transport council is due to meet in Brussels today to discuss the next step, and they will find that the underlying flaws in the commercial model have not gone away. In fact, they may be intensifying.

Reliable information is difficult to get but there are rumours circulating that the German road charging system – the only one in Europe so far that uses satellite positioning data to provide charging information – is running into serious problems. Unofficial reports suggest that the system is having difficulty in processing all the information and that as many as 60 percent of vehicles are escaping charges.

Income from road charging systems using Galileo is a vital component of the cost recovery plan and if they cannot deliver, then the project is in even more difficulty than its critics would have it.

That might explain the outgoing French president's parting shot, recorded here.

Despite the opposition of key EU member states, including Germany, Chirac – out of the blue - is demanding an immediate end to the boycott of arms sales to China. Sales of weapons relying on satellite guidance, some of which would be manufactured by consortium partner EADS, would help to underwrite the costs of commissioning Galileo. With China also favouring its own system, it might help pull it back into the project, also easing the financial crisis.

That much, of course, will not be discussed openly by the commission tomorrow, and it is unlikely that anything of the current traumas will be found in the mainstream media, which has largely ignored the project. But the time is fast approaching when serious financial decisions have to be made, at which point the taxpayers of the EU member states could find themselves having to meet a rather large and unexpected bill.

Brinkmanship may then not be enough.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: galileo, road charging

The EU's Galileo satellite navigation system is in the news in a small way this week, with even the BBC website reporting that the project is in trouble – although it will only concede that it is in a "decisive phase", facing "big delays and cost overruns".

On Wednesday, however, the Financial Times was distinctly less sanguine, noting that, "Profit doubts halt Galileo development" and that "doubts among private contractors involved in the project over its profitability" were at the root of the troubles.

This, we were told, had led EU transport commissioner Jacques "Wheel" Barrot to write to the eight companies forming the consortium which is building the system "to discover the reason for more than a year's delay in the project".

That, at the very least, is a tad disingenuous as, from July last year it was very clear that the project was in trouble, and progressively more so, through August, October, November, and December - all with minimal coverage by the media. It was in December, therefore, that we wrote of the "bizarre fantasy world of the commission", matched "only by the myopia of the MSM", remarking that we could have another "Airbus" on our hands – a "vastly expensive technological white elephant, draining precious funds from member states, with no hope of repayment."

There was no relief by late January, as it became increasingly evident that the commercial model on which the project was based was fundamentally flawed.

This in turn has led to a reluctance on the part of the projected operating consortium to pick up its share of the €3.2 billion cost of launching the 30 satellites and building the ground infrastructure. One third of the overall cost is coming from the EU but the rest was to come from the consortium, which would then recoup its investment by selling location-based technology and services.

By the end of 2006, the consortium was to have formed a single Galileo operating company and have appointed an independent chief executive so the project had a "clear decision making structure". However, no company has been formed, and the consortium remains rudderless - and unable to place orders for Galileo's critical satellites. Only four have so far been ordered and unless orders for the remaining 26 are placed shortly, delays will spiral.

The New Scientist reports that the continued delays in ordering the satellites are having an expensive knock-on effect. Last week, Galileo's technology developer, the European Space Agency, was forced to order Giove-A2, a €30 million Galileo signal testing satellite. It had not planned for the satellite – and only ordered it so it could place it in orbit and maintain rights to Galileo's frequency allocations.

When the current orbiting test craft Giove-A stops broadcasting Galileo signals in mid-2008, after its fuel runs out, the International Telecommunications Union can reassign the frequencies to others unless another craft replaces it.

Originally, Galileo's first four operational satellites (which have been ordered) were to have been in orbit by 2006 – but they have been pushed back to 2009 or beyond, not soon enough to maintain the frequencies. Another test craft, Giove-B, has suffered repeated onboard computer problems and is still grounded. If that craft can eventually launch, however, the newly ordered Giove-A2 satellite, which is funded by taxpayers, may remain grounded after all.

Nevertheless, Barrot yesterday chose to pin all the blame on the consortium, which includes Airbus owner, EADS, again writing to the members, complaining of "foot-dragging".

Barrot also wrote to the German presidency and the European Parliament saying the planned 2010 completion of the project was "in jeopardy." Yet again, this is extraordinarily disingenuous as Barrot's spokesman has already conceded that the timetable for putting the system in place had already been delayed until 2011 - from 2008 originally touted when the system was approved in 2004 - and that more slippage was expected. In fact, a German technology analyst, Bitkom, reckons Galileo will not be up and running until 2014 or later.

Just to add insult to injury, the Spanish government has decided to block any progress in talks by pushing for more control centres to be based in Spain. It wants two control centres on top of those planned to be built in Germany and Italy. That demand had prevented the two Spanish firms signing a pact with the others, prompting a complaint from an EU official that, "Member states are pushing more for national interests than for the overall community interests."

According to the New Scientist, the EU commission is losing patience and is now warning that it might look for new ways to complete the project, "based on a detailed technical, financial, programme management review." Even then, negotiations on a final agreement on a 20-year services and satellite contract for what ever operator is chosen are unlikely to be completed before the end of 2008.

All of this though ignores the underlying flaw in the project – that the EU is expecting to be able to charge for navigation signals that are at present supplied free of charge by the US Navstar system, with the expectation that signals will also be supplied by the Russians and the Chinese, through its Beidou satnav network, free of charge. Thus does the Financial Times cite an unnamed executive saying, "There is a doubt over the revenues," adding, "Why sell Pepsi-Cola when you can get Coca-Cola free?"

Anyhow, Barrot is going to dump the whole mess in front of the Commission next week and is looking for a mandate to set a 10 May deadline for the consortium to act. Based on their reaction, he expects to recommend to the EU transport council in June whether the project can go ahead in its current configuration and what options, if any, should be considered.

It is thus UKIP's Gerard Batten, who says, "It is looking increasingly like an Airbus in space." He is not alone. Paul Verhoef, Galileo programme manager at the EU commission thinks likewise. "Galileo is now being compared with the Airbus situation," he says. "Unfortunately that analysis is correct."

Batten thinks that taxpayers would be forced to bail out Galileo. That, however, is unlikely, as member states have been extremely reluctant to fund the spiralling costs, leaving the very real prospect that the project may have to be abandoned, jeopardising, as the IHT observes, Europe's aim of being a global technological player – and much more.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: galileo

A quite remarkable illustration of how desperately doth the Europhiles cling to their little myths is offered in The Telegraph today, this one from Walter Blanchard, former adviser to the EC on satellite navigation.

Viz-à-viz the use of the free-to-user "Navstar" GPS system as the basis for road charging, he tells us that, "GPS (he means Navstar) cannot ever be used to enforce anything in this country because it is an American-owned, -operated and -controlled military system."

Er no. For sure, the system is operated by the military but, since 1996, the operational policy was defined by the Interagency GPS Executive Board.

Currently, it is managed by the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Executive Committee. This was established by Presidential Directive in 2004 to advise and coordinate federal departments and agencies on matters concerning the GPS and related systems.

The Executive Committee is chaired jointly by the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and Transportation. Its membership includes equivalent-level officials from the Departments of State, Commerce, and Homeland Security, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and NASA. Components of the Executive Office of the President participate as observers to the Executive Committee, and the FCC Chairman participates as a liaison.

Apparently unaware of this, former EC advisor Mr Blanchard goes on to say that, "America has repeatedly refused, rightly, to allow foreign participation, much less legally enforceable control (of Navstar). It advises civil users that it accepts no responsibility for its accuracy, availability or reliability, and it does not guarantee anything." He therefore concludes that:

It is quite obvious that, if this does not change, it will be impossible to make British law around it. This is the main problem that led to the initiation of the European civil-controlled system Galileo. Road-pricing enforcement using a satnav system will have to wait until Galileo is in fully certified operation, which perhaps may not be until 2020 or later.

Interesting that: "…2020 or later." It was supposed to be up and running by 2012 and Alexander wants road charging in place by 2015. Anyhow, as to the substantive point about enforcement – that simply does not compute. How is it that the Germans have a Navstar-based road charging system and are having no problems with enforcement?

If the letter to the Telegraph reflects the quality of advice Mr Blanchard had to offer, no wonder the Galileo system in trouble.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: galileo, road charging

If politicians wish to find out why we hold them in such low regard, they need go no further than look at the wunderkind transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, who is trying to tell us that the satellite road charging system he proposes would not involve an invasion of privacy.

It is The Register, however, that notes that Alexander has also promised there would be "safeguards" to deal with the privacy issue.

Observers of the government data kleptocracy, The Register continues, will be familiar with the "safeguards" gambit, and of course one would not need to implement privacy safeguards if one were not threatening privacy, right? "So it's not exactly a denial", it concludes.

In fact, anyone familiar with the workings of satellite-based road charging systems will know that the privcy issue lies at the heart of the proposedsystem. Its central feature is differential pricing according to location, time and distance travelled, which can only work if the whereabouts of vehicles are known whenever they are on the move.

As far as safeguarding data goes though, as we noted earlier, promises on protection of data are not Alexander's to give. All we need is an EU agreement that information should be "shared" (i.e., given to government agencies) and the game is over.

And, when the technology exists for police to interrogate the on-board computer of any car – in real time - one can see that the attraction of the system would make it irresistible to enforcement agencies and sundry government officials.

But then, as the Telegraph tells us this morning, the "debate" – if you can call it that - is a sham. The decision has already been made.

Furthermore, un-recorded by the media at large, the Department for Transport has already expended massive sums on the EU's Galileo system.

To September last year, in addition to a contribution of €31 million then planned, specific UK contributions to the programme have been €15.3 million (at 1998 prices) for the definition phase and €95.7 million (at 2001 prices) towards the development and validation phase. That is on top of the normal contributions to the EU, some of which have been used on Galileo.

In all, taxpayers have already "contributed" an estimated £200 million to the system at the heart of the road charging system. The government is not going to be expending that sort of money without looking for a payback and, as we know, it is already in discussion with a German technology company about implementing systems.

Slowly, therefore, people are getting the picture, and they like not what they see. That is undoubtedly why the petition is now up to 1,401,511 signatures - from 1,369,970 last night. And it looks set to reach two million by the time it closes on 20 February. The government is going to have to come to terms with the fact that we are not all as stupid as it thinks.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: galileo, road charging

Very much on the back foot of late, transport secretary Douglas Alexander is pledging to "listen, deliberate and discuss" the issues raised by the petition on the No. 10 website urging Tony Blair to "forget about road pricing".

Standing at 1,369,970 signatures (at the time of writing), with seven days to go, the petition has proved a huge embarrassment for the government, which is having one of its main policy ideas on transport – in fact, virtually its only idea – comprehensively trashed.

We look at Mr Alexander's options, here.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: galileo, road charging

The Telegraph's transport correspondent, David Millward, has finally woken up to the fact that "Brussels has demanded that all member state road pricing schemes should not only be harmonised, but be capable of linking with the EU's £2.3 billion Galileo satellite." He writes, in today's newspaper:

Brussels's insistence that road-pricing technology works with Galileo was seen by critics as a way of ensuring the project recoups income from licence fees paid by tolling authorities. Such demands will apply to all road pricing and toll systems introduced since the turn of the year. Existing schemes could be forced to use the same technology.

The Galileo project, a European rival to the Americans' GPS satellite — also hopes to make money from selling its services to companies making compatible satellite navigation devices.

In addition Brussels expects the onboard units, which should be harmonised across the EU, will also be capable of enforcing a wide range of road pricing schemes — from London's congestion charge to a German motorway tolling scheme and even, where possible, time spent in a garage or car park.

Of course, readers of the Sunday Telegraph could have seen this in the Booker column in June 2005, we wrote about it in the blog in the same month, but also as early as March 2005 and again the same month.

But we are talking about Directive 2004/52/EC of 29 April 2004, on the interoperability of electronic road toll systems within the Community, so I suppose it is a little harsh to expect the Telegraph to notice it in less than 2½ years.

But isn't it so good to see professionals at work!

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Labels: galileo, road charging

The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat is telling us in a leader that Germany is facing the same problem in reviving the European Union constitution as a magpie stuck on a tarred roof: when the beak is pulled out, the tail gets stuck.

Finland having just escaped from the maw of the EU presidency, that is an especially poignant comment and the paper's leader-writer is by no means the only one noting that Germany seems to have adopted an extremely difficult task. One wonders why Merkel, with so many other things to entertain and detain her, is so keen to make a rod for her own back.

One also wonders why the "colleagues" are bothering at all for, in the aftermath of the French and Dutch rejection of the constitution, it became very clear that they were pushing on without it and, in many respects, the lack of the document seemed hardly to make any difference to the pace of integration.

With nearly two years elapsed, however, we have actually seen the process of integration stall, with the commission failing to offer any major new initiatives, or "big ideas" in the Delorsian mold.

Furthermore, as a player on the international scene, the EU had been almost totally ineffective. From the slow response to east Asia Tsunami, the failed attempts to constrain Iran's nuclear ambitions and the inability to restrain the genocide in Darfur, the project's famous "soft power" has proved as effective as stale marshmallow.

Then many of the projects which offered the EU a great leap forward seem to have slithered to a halt or are failing to make significant progress. For instance, the European Defence Agency – which was intended to be the proto-European defence ministry – has been forced to operate on a minuscule annual budget, and seem to be going nowhere.

Eurocorps, the wannabe European Army is confined to marginal operations of little political significance that no-one can recall, while the timetable for the European Rapid Reaction Force is slipping, as the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan dominate the headlines – which do not include the EU.

Prestige projects like the Airbus A-380 are going down the pan – possibly followed by the A-400M, about which we reported yesterday. And that includes the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system, as more troubles pile up.

According to About Electronics, delays in commissioning the system are being blamed for delaying the integration of satellite navigation into mobile telephone handsets in Europe, as operators and manufacturers remain uncertain over the deployment schedule for Galileo and the likely quality of its signal.

Then GPS World tells us that the Russian may well be redesigning the electronic architecture of its GLONASS, to permit interoperability with the US Navstar system, allowing the development of cheap handsets utilising both signals – and thereby reducing the utility of Galileo.

And just to rub salt in the wounds, as ballooning costs, bickering over the command centre, doubts even among backers on how it will earn its keep, and problems with the second test satellite weren't enough, Galileo now faces a continued challenge to call itself by its own name.

This is something we reported on way back in January 2005, but now legal proceedings have begun at a district court in Munich, Germany. UK-based Galileo International Technology LLC has filed a lawsuit against the German company Galileo Industries GmbH, headquartered in Ottobrunn.

The district court has already ruled in favour of the British company in a similar dispute and seven other courts are currently involved in settling legal disputes centring on the name Galileo, which appears as part of several other company names. A lawsuit filed against the EU commission (EC) is also ongoing.

Uncertainty over the identity of the name may contribute to the lack of a name for what has been called the Galileo Operating Consortium, or Company, composed of eight European aerospace and defense companies, communications device makers, and satellite manufacturing companies. Formed in 2005 and based in Toulouse, France, it has yet to formally name itself or nominate a chief executive officer. A 20-year funding contract with the European Space Agency and the EU remains in limbo.

From a situation where the constitution didn't actually seem to matter, the European Union as it stands today – at once battered and becalmed – seems to be going nowhere. And, when lost for ideas, the "colleagues" clutch at the nearest passing treaty with the same degree of determination that a heroine addict reaches for the needle.

Thus, despite the difficulties – and the enormous risk of reopening old wounds, with the concomitant risk of rejection – it seems the "colleagues" have little choice but to go for broke - a reflection of weakness rather than strength. With no more guarantee of success than the original attempt, however, this may be the project's last hurrah.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: European constitution, galileo

The EU's €3.6 billion Galileo satellite navigation system is running into yet another spot of bother – several spots, actually, leaving transport commissioner Jacques "Wheel" Barrot (pictured) with more than a few headaches.

Firstly, despite earlier indications to the contrary, it seems that the EU commission is still waiting for €200m of the initial €1.5bn start-up costs that have been promised by member states.

Secondly, contract negotiations with the private sector operating consortium seem to have "stumbled" over who will pay for potential liability claims. The two sides cannot, for the moment, agreed on how potential lawsuits by users of the system, making third-party liability claims, would be handled.

The potential operating companies fear they could be sued if the technology malfunctioned, leaving them open to claims not sufficiently covered by insurance. Somewhat predictably, the companies involved are refusing to take on unlimited liability.

The original plans called for a deal with the private sector to be concluded by late 2005 yet, with it nearly a year behind schedule - and short of money - Barrot is still claiming that "the bulk of the project" remains on schedule. The second test satellite, he says, will be launched in 2007.

Then there is the little matter of a home for the commission's oversight body, the so-called Galileo Supervisory Authority, which will manage the system on behalf of the member states and provide a bridge between them and the operating companies.

Transport ministers were due to agree a location yesterday, with 11 cities in the running: Prague, Ljubljana, Munich, La Valetta, Brussels, Strasbourg, Barcelona, Cardiff, Noordwijk, Athens and Rome. Finnish Transport Minister Susanna Huovinen told journalists after chairing a meeting with her EU counterparts that "This was not the moment for the decision but we have made good progress".

Meanwhile, the commission has launched a four-month consultation, an exercise Barrot hopes will allow private and state players to "explore the full range of possible uses and debate the role of authorities in regulating Galileo, including meeting concerns over privacy." Details, if anyone is that interested, are set out in a Green Paper.

Interestingly and absolutely typical of the way the EU works, the crucial issue of military applications "does not fall within the scope" of the Green Paper. "Consultation on the use of this service for security applications is taking place with governmental and Community entities directly," it says.

Nevertheless, military use remains on the table even though some EU states do not support this option. But Barrot very definitely wants to "leave the door open". He first admitted to a military application this October, the French defence minister having already conceded this use in December 2004 - after we had asserted as much the previous July.

More and more this now looks as if it will not only be a major use, but also the only money-maker. In its discussion document the commission is now admitting (very much in the small print) that Galileo is "complementary and interoperable with the current GPS" (i.e., the US "Navstar" system). It also says that the combined use of the two systems will "significantly increase the reliability and availability of navigation and positioning services worldwide."

What it does not say it that very admission means that the cost recovery model for Galileo, aimed at charging users for access to the signal, is fundamentally flawed. With the US signal being free-to-user, it is hard to see how you can have a composite system where one component is free and the other is chargeable.

Underwriting the operating cost structure has already been a point of contention between the commission and the contractors and this coming issue should be the subject of earnest debate. Member states, in the final analysis, are going to have to fund any shortfall.

But the bizarre fantasy world of the commission is matched only by the myopia of the MSM, which has never seriously engaged with this project. We could, therefore, have in the not too distant future another "Airbus" on our hands – a vastly expensive technological white elephant, draining precious funds from member states, with no hope of repayment.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: Airbus, Barrot, EU, galileo

The EU is "to work on lifting arms embargo against China" says the Chinese state controlled news agency Xinhuanet, following the meeting in Brussels yesterday of the foreign ministers of the 25 EU member states.

This comes at a time when the US is already nervous about the leakage of weapons technology from Europe to China, which accounts for its reluctance to release source codes for the Joint Strike Fighter.

Actually, though, the headline seems more optimistic than is warranted, as even Xinhuanet concedes that the matter was discussed only briefly while the ministers had lunch and, according to EU spokesman Nicolas Kerleroux, there was "not much progress" on lifting the ban.

The IHT is perhaps more realistic in its assessment of the talks, headlining its report, "EU declares a strategic partnership with China, but signals arms ban stays".

Nevertheless, when Lord Drayson is in Washington pleading for the release of source codes, the very fact that EU member states are even discussing the Chinese arms embargo serves to remind the Americans how closely EU member states are already working with China on a number of strategic projects. The Chinese involvement in the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system is but one example.

Coming at this particular time, therefore, these discussions are not exactly helpful.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: arms embargo, China, galileo

"Unless we're prepared to face up to the reality of road pricing it (congestion) will get worse." So said Stephen Ladyman, transport minister, winding up an opposition day debate last night, reinforcing the recommendation of Sir Ron Eddington in his report earlier this week.

If left unchecked, 13 percent of traffic would be subject to stop-start travel conditions by 2025 says the former chief executive of British Airways, a man known for reversing the rebranding of the BA aircraft fleet. Charging drivers could reduce carbon emissions and save the economy up to £28bn in time wasted by delays by 2025, saving five percent in travel time.

This is the government's prescription for improving road travel in the UK, a government which, as shadow transport minister Owen Paterson (pictured right) told the House, took £400 billion in taxes from road users in the last ten years, yet spent only £7 billion per year on roads. And that was in a decade in which traffic grew by 29 percent while road capacity increased by less than two.

However, to achieve what amount to a magical situation – reducing congestion while not actually spending any more money on roads – there is a small catch. A nationwide system of road charging must be in place by 2015. And there lies a very, very large elephant in the room – our old friend the European Union, mention of which is curiously absent from the Eddington report.

The "elephant" comes in the form of EC Directive 2004/52 on the “interoperability of electronic toll collection systems”. This was agreed on 30 April 2004 and entered in force on 20 May 2004. It is not yet transposed into UK law although the date mandated in the Directive was November 2005. The government is, therefore, over a year late, already, although the first provisions of the Directive to take effect will not do so until 1 January 2007.

The crucial issue, however, is the second part of the directive which sets up the European Electronic Tolling Service (EETS). This is intended to allow vehicle operators to subscribe to access any electronic charging scheme in Europe with a single piece of on-board equipment, and potentially receive a single bill covering all transactions, and it thus requires every electronic charging system in the EU to comply with a single European standard.

As Paterson told the crowded chamber, full of hard-working MPs (pictured), the immediate problem is that the standard is not yet defined. It was supposed to be defined by a Commission Decision, supported by a vote of a Regulatory Committee - the Comité Télépéage - by 1 July 2006. That deadline has now passed and the British government is openly admitting that there is still considerable further negotiation needed to develop an EETS that is "workable and cost-effective".

The word "considerable" applies not only to the negotiations but also the degree of understatement. The technology for large-scale road charging is what is known in the trade as "immature". It will be affected both by technical changes and political developments and by the progress of the EU's own Galileo system. This is running late and has no reliable date for its introduction.

Until the technical and then the regulatory framework has been firmed up, however, it will not be possible to establish EETS and without that, no EU member state can seriously think about setting up a full road charging system. And even without the delays, the timetable was already tight – the Directive not anticipating EETS coming into force for cars until 2012.

With both regulatory and technical delays stacking up, it seems almost inconceivable that the government can meet a 2015 timetable. Thus did Owen Paterson ask Ladyman (pictured) what guarantees he could give that his Department could meet the 2015 timetable.

Strangely, in a winding up speech larded with political thetoric and finger-pointing, Ladyman chose to ignore the question, leaving wide open our suspicion that this Labour government is seeking to use Eddington as "a shield and an excuse for another nine years of inactivity", saving money for Gordo to bolster up his failing finances.

Thus does the EU work in wondrous ways, this time giving the Labour government an alibi for not spending any money on our road transport system. And, needless to say, nothing of this will be reported by the MSM. Not only did you see it here first, this is the only place you will see it.

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Labels: galileo

Dismissed by experts as "clumsy", few people had taken much notice of the highly localised Chinese "Beidou" satellite navigation system – until now. But, at the beginning of this month, the government news agency, Xinhua announced that China was to develop it into a fully-fledged satellite navigation system that will include up to 35 satellites.

It plans to have the system operational in the Asian region by 2008, gradually rolling it out to give global coverage with five geostationary earth orbit satellites and 30 medium earth orbit satellites. Navigation services open to commercial customers will initially provide users with positioning accuracy within 10 meters (33 feet), velocity accuracy within 0.2 meters per second and timing accuracy within 50 nanoseconds, the report said.

In fact, Taylor Dinerman was writing about this system in Space review in June last, pointing out that developments in this field were disturbing both the Europeans and the US. The Chinese, he wrote, were going to try to do to America and Europe what the Europeans, under French leadership, had tried to do to the US – using their system to neutralise the US military advantage.

The original plan was for the European Galileo signal frequency to be so close to the US M-code one that any attempt to jam their signal would interfere with the US system’s operation: a neat trick that was aimed at giving France a de facto veto over all US military operations. However, writes Dinerman, the rest of Europe didn’t care to follow France into a conflict of this kind with the US so they forced France to swallow an agreement on harmonising frequencies.

However, the Chinese are not likely to be anything like as "reasonable" and the spectre now emerges that the Chinese will be developing a system with frequencies so close to the US system that jamming becomes impossible without mutual degradation.

But what is also emerging is that China has benefited hugely from its participation in the Galileo programme, gaining the knowledge it needed to develop its own system. This may, in fact, have been the real reason why it joined in the first place, leaving the Europeans with egg on their face.

Although this drama has been totally missed by the MSM, it has belatedly been picked up by the magazine New Scientist. It ignores the military implications but notes that China's decision to expand the functionality of its satellite navigation network could undermine the economics of Galileo. By providing a free or commercially competitive service to customers provisionally staked out by the Galileo consortium, this could drastically reduces its ability to recoup the €2.5 billion cost.

According to New Scientist, the EU's official position is that it does not expect China's plan to impact on Galileo, but that is whistling in the dark. With the already free availability of the US Navstar system and the Russian intention to develop Glonass, the sky is now beginning to look very crowded indeed.

But the biggest threat to Galileo seems to be the ability of receiver manufacturers to integrate the signals from all the rival systems to provide a level of accuracy and reliability available to none of the systems operating independently.

Where we stand with the military implications, though, is as yet uncertain and whether this affects the Indian attitude remains to be seen. But what is increasingly certain is that the UK, is casting its lot in with Galileo, has put its money into another financial black hole.

Between the Airbus A380 and Galileo, we are looking at potential losses of well over £1 billion. And still the MSM sleeps.

COMMENT THREAD

Labels: Airbus, China, galileo

On the whole, the media and most commentators have been underwhelmed by the latest bit of global warming scaremongering, the Stern Report, which produced a good deal more heat than light. The only people who have announced themselves to be really really excited by it have been politicians who, not altogether surprisingly, decided that the only answer to all the problems is higher taxation. Whatever the question, that tends to be the politician's answer. (Or, alternatively, ID cards.)

When this subject was discussed on 18 Doughty Street last Monday (yes, I had better admit, somewhat belatedly, to appearing on its Vox Politix) I was rather surprised by the fact that my two co-disucssants, political bloggers both, appear to have swallowed the propaganda wholesale. One argument was that if all politicians agreed on this, there must be something to the argument, as those politicians must surely believe in what they are saying. Why else, etc, etc?

This was not the line taken by viewers and listeners who wrote in to the programme as we were discussing matters. The messages tended to be on the sceptical side, quoting past climate change, the need to get matters into persective and so on. Nobody made the obvious point - perhaps it was too obvious to make - that if politicians of all parties agree on something, it must be wrong.

There has been a good deal of scepticism on the subject in the media, both on the economic and scientific front. The Stern Report seems to have been playing fast and loose with data and figures.

An interesting response is being published in the Sunday Telegraph. The newspaper is clearly intending to run a series on the subject and various figures to back Christopher Monckton's argument are provided.

Monckton does a good job in showing the unreliability of many of the UN figures, explaining how it managed to "abolish" the Mediaeval Warm Period and produce the infamous ice hockey stick graph, since then disproved by just about every reliable scientist.

Even after the "hockey stick" graph was exposed, scientific papers apparently confirming its abolition of the medieval warm period appeared. The US Senate asked independent statisticians to investigate. They found that the graph was meretricious, and that known associates of the scientists who had compiled it had written many of the papers supporting its conclusion.

The UN, echoed by Stern, says the graph isn't important. It is. Scores of scientific papers show that the medieval warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Then, there were no glaciers in the tropical Andes: today they're there. There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they're under permafrost. There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.

He also has a go at that famous melting ice cap theory:

The Antarctic, which holds 90 per cent of the world's ice and nearly all its 160,000 glaciers, has cooled and gained ice-mass in the past 30 years, reversing a 6,000-year melting trend. Data from 6,000 boreholes worldwide show global temperatures were higher in the Middle Ages than now. And the snows of Kilimanjaro are vanishing not because summit temperature is rising (it isn't) but because post-colonial deforestation has dried the air. Al Gore please note.

The whole article is well worth reading and the data he provides worth following up.

Of course, Christopher Monckton is a sceptic. Given that the history of science is full of sceptics disagreeing with the consensus and pushing scientific knowledge forward that way, in the teeth of that consensus, it is interesting to see that nothing much has changed in that respect. The consensus still screams blue murder when anyone dissents. They can no longer burn those dissenters at the stake but they can and do try to destroy their careers.

One person who experienced the viciousness of the scientific consensus and its political backers is Bjorn Lomborg, who does not, in fact deny, that there is a warming process going or that it is probably caused by human activity. (Not all scientists agree on the second part of that equation even if they agree about the first.)

Lomborg's sin was and is that he refuses to see global warming as the most important issue or the preferred solution, control of emission as top priority for all countries to adopt. He has pointed out in the past that even if the Kyoto Protocol is fully implemented (and there is precious little chance of that) all it will do is postpone the rise in temperature by six years. The money wasted by the implementation of the Protocol could be better used to ensure that there is clean water everywhere in Africa - this would solve some serious immediate problems.

He has returned to the fray by responding to the Stern Report in the Wall Street Journal. Astonishingly enough, he has to go through all the erroneous and deliberately misleading data that Sir Nicholas Stern (an economist, by the way) has based his blood-curdling report.

The review is also one-sided, focusing almost exclusively on carbon-emission cuts as the solution to the problem of climate change. Mr. Stern sees increasing hurricane damage in the US as a powerful argument for carbon controls. However, hurricane damage is increasing predominantly because there are more people with more goods to be damaged, settling in ever more risky habitats.

Even if global warming does significantly increase the power of hurricanes, it is estimated that 95-98 percent of the increased damage will be due to demographics. The review acknowledges that simple initiatives like bracing and securing roof trusses and walls can cheaply reduce damage by more than 80 percent; yet its policy recommendations on expensive carbon reductions promise to cut the damages by one to two percent at best. That is a bad deal.

Mr. Stern is also selective, often seeming to cherry-pick statistics to fit an argument. This is demonstrated most clearly in the review's examination of the social damage costs of CO2 - essentially the environmental cost of emitting each extra ton of CO2. The most well-recognized climate economist in the world is probably Yale University's William Nordhaus, whose "approach is perhaps closest in spirit to ours," according to the Stern review. Mr. Nordhaus finds that the social cost of CO2 is $2.50 per ton. Mr. Stern, however, uses a figure of $85 per ton. Picking a rate even higher than the official U.K. estimates--that have themselves been criticized for being over the top - speaks volumes.

Mr Lomborg then proceeds to demolish data and argument of the Stern Report.He ends, as usual, with a plea to pay attention to what is happening now, not what might or might not happen in the distant future:

Why does all this matter? It matters because, with clever marketing and sensationalist headlines, the Stern review is about to edge its way into our collective consciousness. The suggestion that flooding will overwhelm us has already been picked up by commentators, yet going back to the background reports properly shows declining costs from flooding and fewer people at risk. The media is now quoting Mr. Stern's suggestion that climate change will wreak financial devastation that will wipe 20 percent off GDP, explicitly evoking memories of past financial catastrophes such as the Great Depression or World War II; yet the review clearly tells us that costs will be zero percent now and just three percent in 2100.

It matters because Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Nicholas Stern all profess that one of the major reasons that they want to do something about climate change is because it will hit the world's poor the hardest. Using a worse-than-worst-case scenario, Mr. Stern warns that the wealth of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will be reduced by 10 to 13 percent in 2100 and suggests that effect would lead to 145 million more poor people.

Faced with such alarmist suggestions, spending just one percent of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions seems on the surface like a sound investment. In fact, it is one of the least attractive options. Spending just a fraction of this figure - $75 billion - the UN estimates that we could solve all the world's major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now. Is that not better?

We know from economic models that dealing just with malaria could provide economic boosts to the order of one percent extra GDP growth per capita per year. Even making a very conservative estimate that solving all the major basic issues would induce just two percent extra growth, 100 years from now each individual in the developing world would be more than 700% richer. That truly trivializes Mr. Stern's 10 to 13 percent estimates for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Last weekend in New York, I asked 24 UN ambassadors - from nations including China, India and the U.S.- to prioritize the best solutions for the world's greatest challenges, in a project known as Copenhagen Consensus. They looked at what spending money to combat climate change and other major problems could achieve. They found that the world should prioritize the need for better health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education, long before we turn our attention to the costly mitigation of global warning.

We all want a better world. But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment, simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines.

There is no question about this. The moment politicians, scientists in positions where politics matters and the more alarmist media agree on a subject, the whole subject has to be wrong. If, on top of that, the argument is based on dishonestly presented data, then it is time to recall what Galileo Galilei said: "And yet it moves".

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Labels: China, galileo, Gordon Brown

Not earth-shattering news on the face of it – but actually this is quite stunning in its implications, especially as the news stems directly from the recent announcement by the EU's transport commissioner, Jacques "Wheel" Barrot, that the EU would not rule out military applications for its satellite navigation system.

Although that latter fact was thought worthy of a report only by the Independent and Financial Times newspapers, but by no other UK media sources, India has been blowing hot and cold on joining the Galileo venture for over two years now, with an initial agreement pencilled in during September 2005.

But, back in November 2004 her government was making it abundantly clear that, for an investment of €300 million (then, a €100 million more than China was putting in) it would expect to be an "equal partner" and not just a "mere customer".

One official was cited, not being at all reticent in stating his country's demands: "If we are putting in €300 million we must have a say in the control of the satellite," he said, adding: "If we don't have access to their codes we can be denied access to Galileo's signals in times of war."

There it has rested until very recently when, during the just-concluded summit meeting of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with EU leaders in Helsinki, the final details of the deal were supposed to have been agreed.

But, according to The Times of India - the only media source so far to report this development – the deal "has run into the hard ground realities of security concerns." India fears that sharing of sensitive data may not be adequately firewalled from individuals and other nations participating in the enterprise. Thus, the expected progress towards a final deal could not be made in Helsinki.

Sources have since added that Indian concerns related to the access that the satellite system will have to all manner of geographical and tactical locations in the country. Further, there were questions over how widely would the very precise data the system would provide of facilities, and even individual phone and vehicle users, be accessed.

The major concern, of course, is the participation of China in the project, which has now agreed to sign seven contracts with EU to participate in Galileo and has committed itself to a $241 million investment – creating problems with the uncertainty over users of the data.

Now, we apologise for another patronising, holier-than-thou post, so distorted in content that it is virtually unreadable, but we felt that, since the MSM wasn't going to tell you anything of this, then perhaps you could just about tolerate our input.

Thus, if you have got this far, you might want to consider why it is that India is having problems with China's participation in Galileo – on the back of a declaration on military applications – yet the issue has not been raised by the UK media or even British parliamentarians, even though it must also raise security issues with our own forces and affect our relationship with the US.

However, on reflection, this is clearly not in the least bit important and we apologise for disturbing you. There are vastly more important things about which we should be concerned.

And it is this bunch of losers that wants to govern the country?

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Labels: China, galileo

One of the most egregious long-term failures of our media (and some of our domestic politicians) must surely be their complete inability to come to terms with the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system.

Not only has it failed to pursue the question of why we need an expensive duplicate system, when the US has committed to providing its own "Navstar" GPS entirely free of charge, but it has also faithfully parroted the EU mantra that Galileo is a "civilian system under civilian control".

read more...

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Labels: galileo

The most dangerous form of propaganda is that which does not appear to be propaganda. And it is that form at which the BBC excels.

Typical of the genre is the outrageous “puff” currently on its website extolling the virtues of the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system. Under the headline, "Boost to Galileo sat-nav system", the Beeb reports that, "The UK government is to invest another £21m in a space mission to build a civil satellite navigation system".

As far as it goes, that is factual, but the report then goes downhill, retailing pure propaganda on behalf of the government. This "boost", is according to Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling, "good news for British jobs, British technology and science. Furthermore, the £2.4bn scheme, adds the Beeb helpfully, "promises to transform transport and communication industries", which then allows Darling to add,
"The Galileo project has real potential to develop groundbreaking technology leading to more accurate in-car navigation and new systems for the emergency services to locate missing or injured people."

Nowhere does the Beeb say, however, that the government has already paid £93 million to the scheme which, with the contributions to the EU research fund and European Space Agency payments, now amounts to well over £200 million.

Nowhere does it say that the US GPS "Navstar" system is already up and running, that it is totally free of charge and that any performance benefits that Galileo will be able to offer are largely illusory and will in any case be matched by the new generation of Navstar.

Never mind that, as we have reported , that there are grave doubts as to whether Galileo will ever be able to recoup its investment, that there are significant civil liberties issues with the proposed applications of the system, or that the political and military implications could destabilise Nato and weaken the Anglo-American special relationship.

But then, you might say, why should the Beeb bring all this into a routine announcement by the minister of extra funding for the system?

There's the cleverness of it all. There is no reason at all – so there are no grounds for complaint. But this is "good" news about Galileo, so the Beeb publishes it. Yet, in all the time this blog has been covering Galileo, we cannot recall the Beeb every having published anything critical about the system.

Interestingly, Zombietime has done a superb article about media fraud, which covers many of the categories. But, as we remarked some time ago, and more recently, perhaps the biggest sin of all is that of omission.

It is in routine issues like this – the fate of the Galileo system, which has enormous implications for us all – where the Beeb does most of its damage. By simply not informing us of key issues, they go by default, unchallenged until it is too late to do anything about them.

And it's all so innocent and above board – until you realise the game they are playing.

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Labels: galileo

It somehow seems fitting that, with Airbus on the rocks, the future of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system in question, and the Eurofighter sucking dry the British defence budget for no discernible benefit, that the Eurotunnel should also be on skid row.

According to the Evening Standard, so dire is the situation with this icon of European "togetherness" that the operators have placed the fate of the company in the hands of the French legal system today, filing for the French equivalent of Chapter 11.

This was done by executive chairman Jacques Gounon, who applied for a Procédure de Sauvegarde - similar to the US Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection - after talks with creditors on a massive restructuring of its £2.9bn debt failed. Judges at the Paris Commercial Court are expected to announce on 25 July whether they will approve the application, which will protect Eurotunnel from its creditors.

A panel of judges will decide whether to place Eurotunnel under court protection from creditors for up to 18 months and appoint a court official to supervise fresh attempts to achieve a restructuring deal.

Passenger, freight and shuttle trains through the tunnel were running normally and, if the company wins court protection, Eurotunnel will continue trading under the supervision of Gounon's board, while the court official oversees efforts to strike a deal with creditors.

Meanwhile, says the Standard, a war of words broke out between Eurotunnel and creditors' representatives, with Gounon saying he failed to understand why Deutsche Bank, a leading representative of the bondholders who blocked the deal, had not backed his proposals. Deutsche Bank rejected the charge while the committee of senior creditors, whose members signed the deal in May, blamed Eurotunnel for not making more time for bondholders to negotiate once they finally agreed to talks.

Eurotunnel's problems stem from cost overruns during construction and failure of traffic to hit forecasts. Although revenues are sufficient to cover operating costs and some interest payments, the company is scheduled to begin repaying its loans from January. It has no spare cash to do so. However, Gounon believes if creditors wrote off the bulk of the debt, it could become a viable concern.

Hey, wish I could get a deal like like. Write off my mortgage and I'd be quite well off.

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Labels: Airbus, galileo

It is a while since we heard anything interesting about the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system but, in the wake of the Airbus debacle, this story will warm the cockles of every Eurosceptics' heart.

At the centre of the story is the very nature of the Galileo system which, unlike the US GPS constellation – is not free to all end users. The EU intended to make only a very limited signal available free of charge, aiming to charge users for more accurate signals. This is had planned to do by encrypting the signals and then charging users for the key to the codes, so-called Pseudo Random Numbers (PRN) is tecchie-speak.

Now enter the members of Cornell's Global Positioning System (GPS) Laboratory, some very serious tecchies indeed. Irritated by the failure of the EU to provide, free of charge, some of the codes for the signal generated by Galileo's validation satellite, Giove-A, they set up a programme to crack the codes themselves.

From mid-January, it took them two months and, on 1 April published the codes in a GPS magazine. Two days later, NovAtel Inc., a Canadian-based major manufacturer of GPS receivers, downloaded the codes from the Web site in a few minutes and soon afterward began tracking Giove-A for the first time.

Galileo eventually published PRN codes in mid-April, but they weren't the codes currently used by the Giove-A satellite. Furthermore, the same publication labelled the open source codes as intellectual property, claiming a license was required for any commercial receiver.

Professor Mark Psiaki, a member of the Cornell team, was disturbed, fearing that cracking the code might have been copyright infringement. However, the university counsel decided that, while cracking the encryption of creative content, like music or a movie, was illegal, the encryption used by a navigation signal is fair game.

The upshot says Psiaki is that the Europeans cannot copyright basic data about the physical world, even if the data are coming from a satellite that they built. "Imagine someone builds a lighthouse," argued Psiaki. "And I've gone by and see how often the light flashes and measured where the coordinates are. Can the owner charge me a licensing fee for looking at the light? … No. How is looking at the Galileo satellite any different?"

What that means is free access for consumers who use Galileo navigation devices - including handheld receivers and systems installed in vehicles. What it also means is that The EU, in its plans to reap a financial bonanza from licensing its signals, is well and truly stuffed.

But there is a darker side. At the top end of the accuracy spectrum is the Public Regulated Signal (PRS). This is accurate enough to be used for targeting information by cruise missiles and smart bombs. But it was always the plan - or so it was claimed – that the codes for this signal would be restricted, preventing the likes of China using them for warlike purposes.

But, if the Cornell university team can crack the current code, China – as a paid-up member of the Galileo development team, with full knowledge of the systems architecture – should have no problem cracking PRS. If the EU thinks that Galileo is not going to be used by potentially hostile powers for its weapons and command and control systems, it is dreaming.

The question therefore remains as to whether the EU will agree to close down the system if any hostile power looks like using the signal in hostilities against America, or whether the US Air Force will have to shoot down the satellites.

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Labels: Airbus, China, galileo

We (or I) – according to one of our revered forum members - should be killing the fatted calf over the leader in today’s Telegraph, headed, "Brussels will never take no for an answer". We – or so we are told - all have said this for years, "but when the by-far-the-biggest non-redtop endorses it," it is a cause for celebration.

Frankly, I'd sooner slaughter the leader-writer. It is precisely this type of muddle-headed, superficial diatribe that confuses the issue and makes it so hard to progress the debate.

Consider, if you will, the opening offer: "You may be outraged by the EU's declared intention to revive the European constitution. But, if you have been reading these columns over the past 12 months, you will not be surprised."

Leave aside the little bit of self-promotion – you will not be surprised (but much better informed) if you read this blog, not least that the intention is to delay any attempt at reviving the constitution, rather than any confirmed intention to bring it back to life.

The substantive issue here is the use of the "EU". As a generic term, this can mean all sorts of things and we all use it as a convenient short-hand. But, in this context - as the next part of the leader makes clear - the reference is to the "leaders of the 25 member nations". It is they, according to the Telegraph, who "have pledged to ratify the main parts of the document by 2009".

In other words – no, in the exact words – it is not "Brussels", as such that is doing this, but the democratically elected leaders of our own governments who are hatching this tryst. One of those is Tony Blair who, in any case, is unlikely still to be leader in 2009 but, if his successor takes the same line, then our problem lies not in Brussels, but at home.

Further, it is not the "leaders" who ratify treaties – they sign them. Ratification is down to the parliaments, with or without referendums. Leader can propose – parliament disposes.

On the slender basis thus established by our leader-writer, however, he launches off into the stratosphere, telling us that "there is never a Plan B in Brussels; Plan A is simply re-submitted over and over again until it is accepted." That maybe the case, but it may not. At the moment, plan A is actually stalled and there is no sure way of working out what happens next. The "colleagues" are at as much of a loss as everyone else.

To "prove" the point, though, The Telegraph tells us that "with or without formal ratification, most of the policies and institutions proposed by the constitution have been, or are being, enacted anyway: the European Defence Agency, the External Borders Agency, the Human Rights Agency, the EU foreign ministry and diplomatic corps, the European Public Prosecutor, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Space Programme." Therefore, "the EU … is behaving as if the French and Dutch electorates had voted "Yes" and the constitution were already in force."

Errr… no. What is happening is a lot more subtle, and more complex. For sure, we have the European Defence Agency, but this has been set up not as a community institution but as an intergovernmental agency. It reports via Solana to the Council and relies for its existence of voluntary annual subventions from the member states. In terms of the Monnet method, it is an aberration and, to the integrationalist orthodoxy, a dangerous one at that.

Similarly, while the commission is providing administrative support to the External Borders Agency, its "teeth" are supplied by member states and its continued existence depends on co-operation between member states, with the Council at the helm. We do not have a KGB-type force wearing the ring of stars, answerable to Brussels.

The same intergovernmental framework applies to the space programme, again funded by voluntary contributions from member states – which is why the Galileo programme is in so much trouble. The commission would like control but it remains outside its grasp.

We saw the same with the "diplomatic corps", certainly slated as a backdoor attempt to introduce the constitution, and worrying in its own right. But, in the final analysis, the plan relies on the voluntary co-operation of the member states. And, what can be given, can be taken away.

What is happening, therefore, is a subtle but important shift in the very nature of the European Union. While the constitution was supposed to consolidate and extend the powers of the commission, entrenching the Monnet method – even bringing the European Council fully into the institutional structure – its failure has given a boost to the rival and instable process of intergovernmentalism.

In that important respect, therefore, the constitution, as devised, is not being enacted. It is, in strict community terms, being subverted. If the commission president was more versed in the orthodoxies of the Monnet method, alarm bells would be ringing, but Barroso is going with the flow. It has thus been left to former commission president Jacques Delors to accuse member state leaders of driving the Union into its "worst ever crisis". In his own terms, he is right to do so.

From all this though, it is possible to gauge the complexities and subtleties of a game, the nature of which The Telegraph seems to be entirely unaware. In its ignorance, it rehearses the one-dimensional stereotype. "Brussels" it says, behaves this way "because, in short, that is what it has been designed to do."

Thus follows a "Janet and John" dissertation of the basics of the engrenage process – without, of course, that term being used - with a concluding peroration which asks, "How much longer can decent democrats subject themselves to such a system?"

And therein lies the unacknowledged paradox. The system is being hijacked by those self-same "democrats" – our very own leaders, who subject themselves to the system - and increasingly run it - because it suits them. They are our problem, more so as the ways of the Council, which they employ, are even more secretive than those of the commission. Strangely, they are Brussels' problem as well.

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Labels: barroso, galileo

One should not really take such pleasure in the travails of Airbus – British jobs are at stake here – but so closely linked has been the fortunes of this company with that of the European Union itself that one cannot help but enjoy a certain grim satisfaction when hubris tilts slowly into nemesis.

Even as we left it though, on 18 May when the "superjumbo" arrived in London and little Gordy was prating about its arrival being, "a great day for London, a great day for Britain, a great day for British manufacturing and a great day for European co-operation," the project was already flying into stormy weather – and it ain't got got any better.

We now learn from Reuters that the company has announced new delays of at least six months in deliveries of the A380 superjumbo on Tuesday, a development described as "an embarrassing new setback expected to blow a two billion euro cash hole in parent EADS".

Airbus is still planning to deliver the first aircraft to its launch customer, Singapore Airlines, in 2006, but is then having to slow down deliveries the following year because, it says, of problems with the installation of electrical wiring harnesses.

EADS is predicting that the delays will mean shortfalls in earnings, before interest and tax, of €500 million a year between 2007 and 2010, and acknowledged it would have to pay penalties to carriers which have signed up for the world's biggest airliner.

This is the second major revision in the production timetable, coming as it does on the back of an earlier six-month delay, despite earlier assurances that the programme was running to schedule. In true European fashion, the company's forecasts are turning out to be about as accurate as those of the EU commission.

Still to come is the decision on whether to invest in the revamp of the A340 and A350 series and, somewhere in the wings is the military airlifter project, the A400M, which is attracting a remarkable lack of headlines that bodes ill for the health of that little venture.

The delays on the A380, therefore, could not come at a worse time as EADS is looking down the nose at a major cash shortfall just at the time when the demands on its funds are at their highest, on top of which it is having to stump up for the BAE shares and extending its reach into the military market. It must not be forgotten, also, that EADS is a major funding partner in Galileo, which explains its reluctance there to bail out that project.

Meanwhile, Airbus's customers, including its largest, Emirates, which has ordered 43 A380s, are "considering their position", and the possibility of some bailing out has not been discounted. Would that we could do the same with the European Union which once so proudly took ownership of the project, that other lame-duck "superjumbo".

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Labels: Airbus, galileo