§ Mr. JenkinTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what estimate he has made of the share of the capital cost of the EU Galileo project that will fall to the UK taxpayer; and if he will make a statement. [129994]
§ Mr. HillThe costs of the Galileo project would depend on decisions taken by the Council of Ministers on the project later in the year. The Government have not made an independent estimate of the costs, but the European Commission's current estimate of the capital cost is 3 billion euro for the period 2000–08, of which an estimated 1.25 billion euro would be provided by member states through European Community Programmes and the European Space Agency (ESA). The UK makes its contributions to the EU budget as a whole, not to specific programmes. We estimate that the UK share of the EU budget is around 18 per cent. The UK is contributing about 7 million euro to ESA's work on the definition phase of Galileo. A decision on whether to proceed to the development phase of Galileo may be taken by the December Transport Council. No decision has yet been made as to the UK's contribution to ESA's share of the development costs.