EU ministers approve Galileo budget

The future of the European Union (EU) global positioning satellite project Galileo has been all but secured with the EU Council of Ministers agreeing to raise an additional €2.4bn (£1.7bn) to launch the system. Late on Friday, the council agreed to divert €1.6bn (£1.15bn) of unspent agricultural subsidies to meet the lion's share of these additional costs.

Galileo will now be operational in 2013 - five years after the original timetable launch date of 2008. The package was negotiated with the European Parliament, whose budgets spokesman Kyösti Virrankoski says: "We ended up in a severe situation. We had to decide whether we continued with this project or not."

The Galileo network is designed to provide transport users with navigational services that are more accurate than those available through the American GPS system. However, progress towards building the EU system has been stalled by arguments over Galileo construction and service contracts.