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Glossary of summaries

Galileo

Galileo is Europe’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). It is a civilian system under civilian control, and provides positioning, navigation and timing information for a variety of public and private users. Currently, the number of users has already reached two billion worldwide.

Although Galileo has been designed to function independently of other existing systems, it is fully compatible with the US GPS. This allows receiver manufacturers and application developers to develop devices that work seamlessly with more than one system.

The Galileo infrastructure consists of a constellation of satellites and a global network of ground stations. The signals broadcast by the system provide outstanding services that can be used in a large variety of sectors such as transport (road, aviation, maritime, rail), agriculture, mapping and surveying, etc. Galileo is also being increasingly used in drones to ensure smooth navigation, and in search and rescue operations to save lives.

In addition, location-based services and very accurate timing services provide opportunities for network synchronisation in the energy and telecommunications sectors.

The EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) is an agency responsible for the operations and service provision of Galileo and EGNOS, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, which improves satellite navigation performances over Europe mainly for safety-of-life applications.

Galileo is used in applications and devices ranging from smartphones to wearables and from aircraft to personal vehicles. The following legislation makes use of the benefits of Galileo:

  • As of April 2018, all new car models sold in the EU must be equipped with Galileo capabilities, as required by the eCall regulation (Regulation (EU) 2015/758).
  • As of June 2019, smart tachographs need to be compatible with Galileo (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/799).
  • As of October 2021, on-board equipment which uses satellite navigation, associated with electronic road toll systems, needs to be compatible with Galileo (Directive (EU) 2019/520).
  • As of March 2022, all smartphones sold in the EU must incorporate GNSS capabilities, at least Galileo capability, so that the satellite navigation information can provide caller location information to the emergency services in emergencies(Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/320).

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