The European Union Satellite Centre (EUSC) is an agency of the European Union's (EU) Council of Ministers which gathers information through satellite images.
EUSC was set up in 2002 to replace the Western Union Satellite Centre and thus represents a part of the transfer of functions from the Western European Union (WEU) to the European Union (EU), and more specifically to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The centre is in Torrejón de Ardoz in Spain. Other countries who have an association agreement with the EUSC can also use its resources.
Although it is autonomous in its daily operations, the High Representative of the Common Security Policy, in the person of Catherine Ashton, is responsible for its operational direction.
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“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
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—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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The wet centre is bottomless.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)