More EU aggrandisement

The BBC proudly report that:

"A German/UK consortium has been asked to supply the first operational spacecraft for Europe's Galileo satellite-navigation system.

OHB System and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) will build 14 satellites in a contract valued at 566m euros ($811m; £510m).

The contract was announced by the European Commission in Brussels.

Galileo is intended as an EU version of the US Global Positioning System (GPS), but with significant improvements.

Its more advanced technology should give users quicker, more reliable fixes, and enable them to locate their positions with an error of one metre compared with the current GPS error of several metres. "

So when you are driving how many times has your Sat Nav's 'innacuracy' caused you a problem and had you wishing for a more accurate version?

In May 2007 I blogged that:

"in 1999 the EU started planning a rival system. The original plan was for this system to cost £0.7bn and be privately funded and run; the latest estimate is £2.7bn and costs will no doubt rise again. This is surely not a problem as this is a privately funded project? Well it was to be privately funded, however now the EU have realised that there is no real market for a charged for untested competitor to compete with a free to the end user working system "

Hidden at the end of that BBC piece is this news nugget:

"The venture came very close to being abandoned in 2007 when the public-private development-and-business model set up to build and run the system collapsed.

To keep Galileo alive, EU member-states had to agree to fund the entire project from the public purse. What should have cost European taxpayers no more than 1.8bn euros will now probably cost them in excess of 5bn euros. "

So in 1999 the budget was £0.7bn of private money, in 2007 it reached £2.7bn of public money and now it's £5bn and the project is not finished yet.

So at a time when the EU's economies are screwed we are wasting money on a vanity project.