EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, held its 68th Council meeting in Darmstadt, Germany, on December 1st through 2nd. The meeting was chaired by General Dr. Massimo Capaldo, Head of the Meteorological Department (Chief of the Staff Office - Ufficio Generale Spazio Aereo e Meteorologia) in the Italian General Meteorological Office.

This was the first EUMETSAT Council attended by the Czech Republic and Romania as observers in anticipation of both countries soon becoming full Member States. The Minister of the Environment of the Czech Republic, Jan Dusik, addressed the Council. The Council extended the Cooperating State Agreement with Bulgaria by two years until 31 December 2011. The Council made further progress on the optional Jason-3 altimetry program and Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). A draft Jason-3 memorandum of understanding was approved and the Council gave the go-ahead for cooperation with the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) on the programme once it receives final approval.

The Council also extended the deadline for interested EUMETSAT Member States to subscribe to Jason-3 to the end of January 2010. So far, 13 out of 19 Potential Participating States have subscribed to the programme. EUMETSAT Member States are prepared to contribute 63.6 million euros to the 252-million euros program cost of Jason-3. The Council also expressed strong support for the content of the European Commission's Communication on the GMES Space Component, which proposes a wider role for EUMETSAT as the interface for marine and atmospheric composition user communities and also on the proposal made by the European Commission to establish direct relationships with EUMETSAT in the GMES context. The EUMETSAT/European Space Agency (ESA) Implementing Arrangement on the GMES Sentinel-4 instrument, which will be carried by the future Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) was approved by Council.

Delegates discussed the draft MTG Program Proposal, MTG Programme Resolution and Programme Definition, which are expected to be approved by a special Council to be held in March 2010, opening the programme for voting by EUMETSAT Member States. Further steps were taken paving the way for the next generation of the EUMETSAT Polar System with the approval of a concept paper on cooperation with the Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), the German Aerospace Center, on a visible/infrared imager.

The Council extended the EUMETCast-Americas service covering South and Central America by a further three years until the end of 2013. It also gave the go-ahead for implementation of the Oslo Declaration on Data Policy, which will increase the data set freely available to all users. The Council agreed on EUMETSAT’s involvement in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and CNES SARAL (Satellite with ARgos and ALtimeter in Ka-band) program with a near-real-time data processing centre which will disseminate processed data to end users. Then, finally, the organisation’s budgets for 2010 were approved, including further steps towards the expansion of the EUMETSAT headquarters building in Darmstadt.