Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
monit-
oring
weather and
climate
change

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p73.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p71.

p72

At the twenty-first meeting only five delegations were unable to vote in favour of the Resolution. Those who did vote in favour represented a substantial chunk of the funding. The Council agreed that the Resolution and an account of the voting should be sent directly to ESA's Director-General.

The Resolution established the MSG programme as of 1993 with a first launch scheduled for 2000. The programme was planned to run until 2012. EUMETSAT's and ESA's programmes, said the Resolution, should run in parallel. EUMETSAT's programme was defined as including participation in the detailed definition, development and demonstration of the prototype in exchange for a fixed contribution of 162 MECU at 1992 economic conditions to ESA's MSG programme. The programme would also include: procurement of the launchers, the definition, development and procurement of the ground segment, system commissioning following definition of the prototype and systems operations beginning not later than 2001.

Delegates agreed that the programme would be implemented in two slices. The first was a demonstration phase including a contribution to the ESA prototype, procurement of a launch for the prototype, and definition and development of the ground segment. The second slice was for the subsequent satellites, their launchers and operations.

During the next year ESA and EUMETSAT negotiated a Cooperation Agreement detailing their respective responsibilities. It was a far cry from the arrangement that governed relationships between the two organisations in the MOP. Each organisation named a Programme Manager and they were jointly responsible for establishing the management interfaces and technical documentation. The Agreement fleshed out the details of areas of responsibility. It also specified that the two programmes would go ahead according to the financial and industrial rules of each organisation.

For several months the discussion about acceptance of the Cooperation Agreement became ensnared in debates with France about the terms for buying a launch on Ariane.

There was also an intensive debate, says Morgan, as to whether the "industrial return" factor in the ESA contribution should include contributions to the EUMETSAT programme, and if so, in what fashion. Clearly, States likely to benefit from industrial return tended to one point of view, while those committed to the best-value-for-money procurements favoured the opposite.

Compromises were ironed out and at the twenty-fourth Council meeting in November 1993 delegates fully approved both the Resolution on the MSG programme and the Cooperation Agreement between ESA and EUMETSAT. At the twenty-fifth Council meeting held in Toulouse, France, in June 1994, the final ad referendum restrictions were lifted.

Establishing a space segment policy robust enough to take account of the realpolitik of industrial policy, national aspirations, European launcher policy etc., was an important part of EUMETSAT's maturation. The mature EUMETSAT also emerged in response to the deep policy debates that extended tentacles into

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.

eChapter| |TOP

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