20.7.2004 Official Journal of the European Union L 246/1 | (Acts whose publication is obligatory) COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 1321/2004 of 12 July 2004 on the establishment of structures for the management of the European satellite radio-navigation programmes THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Article 308 thereof, Having regard to the proposal from the Commission, Having regard to the opinion of the European Parliament (%), Whereas: (1) The European satellite radio-navigation policy is presently implemented  through the EGNOS and Galileo programmes. Galileo is the first European space programme to be financed and managed by the European Union in asso- ciation with the European Space Agency (ESA). It is expected to contribute to the development of numerous applications in areas that are associated, directly or indirectly, with Community policies, such as transport (positioning and measurement of the speed of moving bodies), insurance, motorway tolls, law enfor- cement (surveillance of suspects, measures to combat crime), customs and excise operations (investigations on the ground, etc), agriculture (grain or pesticide dose adjustments depending on the terrain, etc.), fisheries (monitoring of boat movements). EGNOS is a tripartite programme between the European Community, the ESA and Eurocontrol aiming at augmenting the American GPS and Russian GLONASS signals for reliability purposes on a broad geographical area. It is independent from and complementary to Galileo. The conclusions of the European Council in Cologne (3 and 4 June 1999), Feira (19 and 20 June 2000), Nice (7 to 11 December 2000), Stockholm (23 and 24 March 2001, Laeken (14 and 15 December 2001), Barcelona (15 and 16 March 2002) and Brussels (20 and 21 March 2003) have stressed the strategic nature of Galileo. (') Opinion delivered on 31 March 2004 (not yet published in the Official Journal). ©) Given the strategic nature of the European satellite radio- navigation programmes and the need to ensure that essential public interests are adequately defended and represented, it is imperative to supervise the next phases of the system and the use of Community funds allocated to the programmes in accordance with the relevant political orientations of the Council and financial decisions of the budgetary authorities; a European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Supervisory Authority (hereinafter referred to as the Authority) should therefore be set up. On a number of occasions, and particularly in its conclusions of 5 April 2001 and 26 March 2002, the Council underlined that substantial private sector partici- pation is a fundamental element for the success of Galileo in its deployment and operational phases. To this end, the Authority should conclude a concession contract with whichever consortium is selected on completion of the development phase of Galileo and take steps to ensure compliance by that consortium with the obligations — in particular the public service obligations — arising from the concession contract. The Authority should be the concession holder’s sole interlocutor on the matter of frequencies. In parallel, Member States that have lodged files with the International Telecommunication Union on the use of the frequencies necessary to ensure the operation of the system should also allow the Authority to assign the right to use thereof to the concession holder for the duration of the concession, so as to enable the latter to provide the requisite services stipulated in the specifi- cations.