Galileo delivers for Europe

A long-awaited European dream has come true - on 15 December, Europe's satellite navigation system Galileo starts offering its services to public authorities, businesses and citizens.

Galileo will provide free of charge services available for emergency search and rescue operations, more accurate navigation services for Galileo-enabled smartphones or in car navigation systems, better time synchronisation for critical infrastructures, and fully encrypted services for public authorities.

Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, responsible for the Energy Union, said: "Geo-localisation is at the heart of the ongoing digital revolution with new services that transform our daily lives. Galileo will increase geo-location precision ten-fold and enable the next generation of location-based technologies; such as autonomous cars, connected devices, or smart city services. Today I call on European entrepreneurs and say: imagine what you can do with Galileo – don't wait, innovate!".

Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska, responsible for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, added: "Galileo offering initial services is a major achievement for Europe and a first delivery of our recent Space Strategy. This is the result of a concerted effort to design and build the most accurate satellite navigation system in the world. It demonstrates the technological excellence of Europe, its know-how and its commitment to delivering space-based services and applications. No single European country could have done it alone."

Galileo is Europe's Global Satellite Navigation System. It provides a range of state-of-the-art positioning, navigation and timing services to users worldwide. Galileo is fully interoperable with GPS, but will offer more accurate and reliable positioning for end users. At the moment, the Galileo constellation consists of 18 satellites, all of which are already in orbit.

The full constellation foresees a total of 30 satellites and is expected to be completed by 2020.