European Authorities Urged to Boost GNSS Research

March 10, 2010 By: Alan Cameron

Gard Ueland, president of the European industry consortium Galileo Services, speaking Wednesday at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit, posed the rhetorical questions “Will Europe be able to increase its GNSS market share from approximately 20 percent today to its usual 33 percent for high-tech sectors?” He answered it, “Probably not, at least with the current rate of R&D spending,” and then introduced an industry manifesto (below) calling for dramatically increasing GNSS applications research funding to give European industry a chance to increase its level of uptake in the GNSS global market.

Funding originally allocated within the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to support GNSS applications development has been removed in 2007 to fill in a gap in the Galileo infrastructure development finances. Today, there is no more budget beyond the upcoming third call to foster GNSS R&D within FP7, according to Galileo Services. Such a situation is critical as it may prevent many European universities, research organizations, and industries — in particular smaller companies — to pursue their research and development activities towards EGNOS and Galileo applications. "The impact may be disastrous not only for the competitiveness of European stakeholders vis-à-vis their American and Asian competitors, but it might also simply divert the attention of users' communities and applications' developers towards non European GNSS services available or to be operational soon," stated a Galileo Services press release.

“If a solution is not rapidly found, Europe runs the risk to loose the momentum created by the EGNOS and Galileo infrastructures and thus to miss a unique opportunity to boost European downstream industry growth and to develop new businesses in Europe,” said Ueland.

“An ambitious European GNSS R&D program is required now as the GNSS technology is evolving fast and new advanced applications will be needed for the future,” said Prof. G. Leon, vice-rector for Research, Technical University of Madrid.

P. Campagne, CEO of FDC and Coordinator of OREGIN, also stressed that “EGNOS market take-up would not have happened in most of the application domains without FP6 and FP7. Considering the competition, Galileo needs even more R&D support to become a success for European Economy.”

The manifesto urges the European Commission, the European Council, the European Parliament, and the Member States of the European Union
to consider increasing dramatically community funding for GNSS applications R&D to:

Foster the development of EGNOS and Galileo applications,
Leverage European industry and research organizations' uptake in the GNSS global environment,
Thus to guarantee the opportunity for Europe to capitalize on public investment devoted to the European GNSS infrastructures.

Already supported by more than 200 European Research players, the manifesto below is open to further signatories.

MANIFESTO FOR A MORE COMMITTED EUROPE TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF GNSS APPLICATIONS

2009 and 2010 are very important years for EU GNSS programmes with the official launch of the EGNOS Open service on 1^stOctober 2009, the award of several contracts as regards Galileo’s infrastructure, such as the production of 14 satellites of the constellation, and the first 2 IOV satellites to be launched by end 2010.

Many new applications related to positioning, navigation and timing may now effectively emerge and use this infrastructure: All transport modes, precision agriculture, environment protection, assistance to people on the move, to disabled and elderly citizens, synchronisation of complex networks are some examples of the very wide domain of applications concerned. The GNSS global market of products and services which was worth €124 bn in 2008 is expected to double by 2030.

Nonetheless, Europe’s GNSS market share is currently rather low (20%) compared to its usual share in other high-technology sectors (33%)¹<. There is thus an imminent risk that Europe’s industry misses a huge opportunity to develop, unless a substantial public funded support program to foster innovation, development and new business opportunities is in place. Being the owner of the Galileo and EGNOS assets, the European Union has a great responsibility in facilitating the utilisation of this opportunity to the best for Europe and Europe’s citizens.

Research is proven to be the most favourable way to stimulate innovation and to develop cutting-edge applications and user segment. It is the key to success for European industry in a competitive world. In some countries like the US, China, and Russia, public funding support is driven largely by military and strategic aspects. US public funded programs are estimated to reach between 200 M€ and 500 M€ per year¹. In Europe though, EU GNSS programmes are driven by civilian purposes only and effectively the EU budget now is of around 15 M€ a year for two years. After that, there is no allocated funding at all.

Such a tiny EU research budget will have huge consequences for EU industry in the short term. Neither will it allow for sufficient support of the SMEs which have been recognized as one of the main forces of innovation. Foreign industries benefiting from ample public funding, a strong R&D advantage and established market positions will overtake EU’s market. Moreover, EU’s effort to gain its independence as regards GNSS, by building its own infrastructure, will be pointless if it is dependent on foreign applications, receivers and devices.

The present context of the economic crisis also gives a strong incentive not to lose this opportunity to develop new industrial activities in Europe. Galileo applications have the potential of creating some tens of thousands of new jobs in Europe in the ten coming years.

The EU and its Member States are therefore urged to consider increasing dramatically GNSS applications research funding to give European industry, SMEs, and all the stakeholders, a chance to increase their level of uptake in the GNSS global market and to ensure EU’s independence in a sector on which more than 6% of the whole EU GDP relies.

Until 2013, and in addition to the national efforts of the Member States of the Union, EU’s GNSS applications and user segment R&D funding should be raised to at least 100 M€ a year from 2010 on. Further, the level of EU’s R&D funding through FP8 should increase to match the US public R&D investment in order to provide the European GNSS downstream industry with the means to be and to remain competitive.

The signatories of this manifesto urge the European Commission, the European Council and the Member States of the European Union to take action and achieve this aim already from 2010 on. They urge the European Parliament to bring support to this initiative.

¹ EC estimate

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