Additional Belgian contribution to the construction of the "Extremely Large Telescope"

On the proposal of State Secretary for Science Policy Thomas Dermine, the Council of Ministers agreed on an additional contribution from Belgium for the construction of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and the operational phase of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in the framework of the ELT.

The ELT is the astronomical observatory project that ESO has been working on in association with the European scientific community since 2005. Belgium confirmed its participation in the project in 2012.

In this context, Belgium will make an additional contribution to the project.

This will involve the following sums in concrete terms:

an additional budget of 3.725 million euros for the continuation of the construction of the ELT, for the period 2022-2029
an annual contribution to ESO of EUR 5.837 million, starting in 2023