Adoption in Parliament’s committee of the draft regulation on GMES programme and its initial operations 2011–2013

[gmes.info] On 11 May 2010 the draft report on the Commission
proposal for European Earth observation programme (GMES) and its initial
operations 2011–2013 (COM(2009)0223) has been unanimously approved by
the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
(ITRE), with MEP rapporteur Norbert Glante (S&D, Germany).

The committees on Budgets (BUDG) and Environment
(ENVI) gave opinion on this draft report, with MEPs in charge
respectively Damien Abad (PPE, France) and Vittorio Prodi (S&D,
Italy).

The EU funding foreseen for the 3-year initial
operations phase is €107 million, supplemented with €209 million from
the "space" theme of the Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) for
accompanying research actions. The GMES programme should be fully
operational by 2014. ESA will be responsible for technical co-ordination
and implementation.

In the adopted draft report MEPs of the ITRE
committee included the provision of open access to data gathered by
satellite (except for security sensitive data) through a free-of-charge
licensing and online access scheme. This provision should maximise
benefits for the widest possible range of applications and foster a
"downstream market".

As a next step, the vote by the whole Parliament on
the draft report is scheduled for 16 June 2010.

More information
at:
www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/052-74365-130-05-20-909-20100510IPR74364-10-05-2010-2010-false/default_en.htm

Source: http://www.gmes.info/pages-secondaires/news/news-detail/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=229