Last week Guido said Michel Barnier was lost in space over Galileo, and that his attempts to push the UK out of the satellite project would send costs spiralling for the EU-27 and delay the project even further due to their lack of expertise. Hungary is the first EU country to protest to Brussels – their foreign minister Peter Szijjarto has done a broadcast round today telling the EU to pack it in:

NEW: Hungarian Foreign Minister intervenes in row over UK participation in Galileo satellite project. Peter Szijjarto tells @itvnews it would be ‘irresponsible’ for EU to push out the UK which contributes 12% of budget pic.twitter.com/OaqLPzEdYW

— Libby Wiener (@LibbyWienerITV) May 24, 2018

Losing or not taking advantage of the capacity of what the UK can contribute to the Galileo project, I think it’s rather irresponsible and I don’t really see that that would be in the interests of the EU…

Q: Would you like to see the UK staying in the Galileo programme?

Yes, of course. We understand the UK covers 12 per cent of the costs of the budget of the Galileo programme and I really do think that the security risks that are ahead of the European Union demand a very strong cooperation between the UK and the European Union. I think that giving up the cooperation with the UK on the field of intelligence or any other security aspects would be very irresponsible on the part of the European Union.

That’s Michel told…