Meteorology, Meteorological, History

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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p72.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p69.

p71

ESA's industrial policy is that contracts should be awarded to industrial bidders in proportion to that nation's contribution to a programme - so-called juste retour. By contrast, it was EUMETSAT's mandate from the beginning to place contracts by competitive tendering. The intention of ESA's policy was to strengthen the aerospace industry in Europe, and for a number of countries it was an important means of participating in a high-technology industry and providing quality employment. EUMETSAT's rationale for its policy was that as an operational Organisation, it needed to keep costs down.

At the time, EUMETSAT's policy was, and still is, for competitive tendering. However, some national delegations were keen to see at least the development of new space segments fall under ESA's control so that ESA's policy of juste retour applied to the creation of the industrial teams. With this issue always in the background, the debate about the respective roles of ESA and EUMETSAT in the MSG programme continued until the eighteenth Council meeting in March 1992. At that meeting delegates passed a Resolution on Long-Term Management Policy that found a compromise between competing aspirations.

The Resolution said that the EUMETSAT Council would determine the space segment requirements of systems such as the MSG and the EPS, thus EUMETSAT's desire to have control over the technology it was buying was catered for. EUMETSAT would then request ESA to develop a prototype under an Agency development programme. EUMETSAT could make a fixed contribution and take over responsibility for the space segment once in-orbit commissioning was complete. In this way EUMETSAT would have significant input into the instrument design and its expenditure would be limited to an agreed contribution. ESA would retain responsibility for developing the prototype and thus could apply its industrial policy. The policy met both spoken and unspoken concerns raised by France during the debate about MSG at the fifth Council meeting in September 1987.

During 1992, EUMETSAT finalised a proposal for MSG in line with the space segment policy of the Resolution on Long-Term Management Policy. ESA, in the meantime, became anxious that EUMETSAT make a formal commitment to the programme. The Director-General wrote to the EUMETSAT Council Chairman asking for a clear indication of whether the Organisation wished to participate in the MSG programme. The Chairman drew delegates' attention to the letter during the twenty-first Council meeting in November 1992, saying it was time for EUMETSAT to take the initiative.

Given that a number of delegations were not yet in a position to formally commit their governments to the programme, the Chairman proposed that voting be opened during this meeting even if the necessary unanimous vote could not yet be achieved. In this way ESA would be given a clear indication of EUMETSAT's intentions. The idea behind this procedure was that once a vote was cast in favour of the Resolution, that nation was honour bound not to back out of its commitment. This applied whether the vote was pro the Resolution without restriction or ad referendum (meaning that the delegate still needed to clear various hurdles nationally, but did not anticipate a major problem).

SEE ALSO| |

1. Meteorologists shed political shackles, a review of Declan Murphy's history of the first 25 years of EUMETSAT (2011), by Helen Gavaghan.

2. An interview in 2010 with Dr Tillman Mohr, a special advisor to the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation, in Science, People & Politics.

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Contents

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

Ch.1

Ch.2

Ch.3

Ch.4

Ch.5

Ch.6

Ch.7

Ch.8

The History of EUMETSAT is available in English and French from EUMETSAT©.
First printed 2001. ISBN 92-9110-040-4

Eumetsat meteorology meteorological artificial satellites
European Space Agency weather climate policy politics history