Presidency compromise text for a Council resolution on European Space Policy

Brussels, 19 May 2003

Full text of Document 8978/03
Suite of documents 8978/03

No. Cion prop.: 5707/03 RECH 9
No. Prev. doc. 8790/03 RECH 73
Subject: Green Paper on European Space Policy
- Council Resolution

1. On 24 January, 2003, the Commission submitted to the Council a Green Paper on European Space Policy. This Green Paper, which was presented to the "Competitiveness" Council by the Commission on 3 March 2003, launched a broad public consultation on the guiding principles of a future European Space Policy; this consultation process is due to terminate at the end of May 2003.

2. As a response to the Green Paper, the Presidency put forward a draft Resolution on "the development of an overall European Space Policy". Following discussions in the Permanent Representatives Committee on 7 May 2003, the Presidency has elaborated a compromise text, on which there is a large measure of agreement, and which is set out in Annex. Requests from delegations for further textual changes, which are not incorporated in the compromise text, are indicated in the footnotes to the Annex. All delegations have a scrutiny reservation on this text. In addition, the DK delegation has a Parliamentary scrutiny reservation.

3. The outstanding issues are as follows: -

- a request from the D/F delegations for reference to be made (in point 4) to the need for improvements to the policy, financial and institutional arrangements applicable to European space matters. The majority of delegations prefer not to make a specific reference to these arrangements which may prejudge the outcome of the ongoing consultations on the Green Paper. For this reason, the Presidency compromise text makes no reference to these arrangements;

- the DK delegation maintained a reservation on the reference to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (point 5, final indent);

- the D delegation has a scrutiny reservation on the text "while fully respecting the EC-Treaty, the ESA Convention and the respective roles of each organisation" (point 7);

- the F delegation maintains a reserve on the word "possible" (point 8) in relation to a European Space Programme.

4. The Permanent Representatives Committee recommends to the Council that, after resolving these outstanding issues, it should adopt the Resolution and have it published in the Official Journal.

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