EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, held its 65th Council meeting in Darmstadt, Germany, on October 9th. This was the first Council 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. The Council decided on the way ahead for the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) program. The Council approved the MTG payload complement as the baseline for the preparation of the full EUMETSAT MTG Development and Operations Programme Proposal. MTG will be three-axis stabilized and based on a twin-satellite concept. Under this concept, there will be two types of satellites, one for imaging (MTG-I) and one for sounding (MTG-S). The payload proposed for MTG-I consists of a Flexible Combined Imager, Lightening Imager, data collection system, and search and rescue (GEOSAR), while MTG-S would have an Infrared Sounder and an Ultra-violet, Visible and Near Infrared Sounder, the latter as the EU Kopernikus (former Global Monitoring for Environment and Security or GMES) program’s Sentinel 4 to be provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Council tasked the EUMETSAT Director-General, Dr. Lars Prahm, to carry out the MTG Phase B (preliminary design) activities covered under the MTG Preparatory Programme aimed at a baseline system designed to cover up to 20 years of operational service for the imagery mission, including the related number of MTG-I and MTG-S satellites to be deployed.