UFO researchers and parliamentarians gathered to discuss the EU's UAP policy
We attended the meeting.
For the first time in 30 years, UAP are back in the EU Parliament. The background to this is the current developments in the United States. After whistleblower David Grusch appeared at the US Congress July 2023 hearing, MEP Francisco Guerreiro submitted a question to the European Commission and wanted to know whether there was also information about UAP in the EU.
The Commission's response revealed that no EU authority is dealing with this issue. However, it is known that several member states, such as Spain, Italy and France, have been conducting UAP research for decades.
"The aim of this event is to open a debate on UAP in the EU Parliament," said Guerreiro. It is about removing the stigma associated with the topic in aviation, the military, journalism and politics.
Small conference room, big topic
The event took place in a relatively small conference room, which was attended by UFO researchers from several countries as well as a number of parliamentarians.
UAP - an urgent problem
André Jol spoke on behalf of UAP Coalition Netherlands, a non-governmental organization that initiated the project together with parliamentarian Guerreiro. He explained the characteristics that distinguish UAP from identifiable objects and why the phenomenon poses a potential threat to aviation security. The prevailing stigma surrounding UAP prevents pilots, for example, from reporting them openly. He encouraged increased data collection and international cooperation on UAP and pointed out that UAP should be considered in EU-wide aviation security and space legislation.
All EU states affected
Italian researcher Edoardo Russo from the European scientific research network EuroUFO gave a general overview of the phenomenon. There are more sighting reports from Europe (170,000) than from the USA (105,000). The phenomenon occurs more frequently every couple of years. Over the last 75 years, almost all European countries have been affected, including Spain (1968), France (1974) and Italy (1978). Lights in the night sky are generally reported (76 percent), but as many as 10 percent of the reports concern close encounters with the phenomenon. There were also reports of physical effects, ground traces, pilot sightings and radar detections, although the latter have often been kept under military secrecy. Around 6.5 percent of the inhabitants of various EU countries have already seen UAP, which would be equivalent to around 29 million people in the EU as a whole.
Why science has no answers
Swedish astronomer Dr. Beatriz Villarroel from the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stockholm University spoke about how science is dealing with the phenomenon. The great stigma surrounding the topic is the reason why UAP have hardly been researched by scientists in the last 70 years. "It's difficult to publish on it. And because it's difficult to publish, even if you have some results, it means there's no evidence, so you can't publish anything about it. It's a catch 22," said Villarroel. Despite the lack of data, there are some promising projects, such as the Galileo Project at Harvard University, which uses infrared cameras to scan the sky and artificial intelligence for analysis. To test the hypothesis that alien objects in space are extraterrestrial aircraft, Dr. Villarroel has examined historical photographic plates from the period before the launch of the first human satellite Sputnik in 1957 and found a series of aligned lights that disappear from one photo to the next. Whether these were UAP is unclear, but interestingly, such rows of lights appeared in space on the very two days in July 1952 when Washington D.C. was experiencing the peak of a UAP sighting wave.
Real threats in the airspace
Former US naval pilot Ryan Graves also spoke from the USA. He pointed out the reliability of pilot reports and the need to systematically collect UAP data. Governments play an important role in freeing the topic of UAP from its stigma. The stigma is so powerful, he says, that civilian and military pilots prefer to remain silent about their observations rather than risk their careers. Yet UAP are a global phenomenon that pose a threat to aviation safety. Graves spoke from his own experience. During his service in the US Navy, he and his comrades repeatedly observed unknown objects on radar and infrared systems. During a training manoeuvre, one of them came within a dangerous 15 meters of the fighter jet. It looked like a dark gray cube inside a transparent sphere. The exercise had to be stopped immediately. But it did not stop there. “The UAP we encountered and tracked on multiple sensors behaved in ways that surpassed our understanding, appearing motionless against hurricane-force winds, accelerating to over Mach1, and outlasting our fighter jets" said the former naval pilot. The origin of these phenomena is still completely unclear. For this reason, Ryan Graves founded the organization "Americans for Safe Aerospace" and is committed to ending the stigma and educating the public about it.
UAP sightings by European pilots
Dutch pilot Christiaan van Heijst made it clear that UAP are not an American invention. In his 20 years as a cargo pilot, he had already observed all kinds of things all over the world - weather phenomena, rocket launches, military operations. But he has also seen inexplicable objects in Europe. Once, he says, a very bright light shot down over Germany at an incredible speed in front of the plane. "It illuminated the clouds below our airplane, indicating that it was something really outside of the cockpit. It wasn't just the reflection that I've seen“, says the experienced professional pilot. Years later, van Heijst observed a similar phenomenon over Greece when his plane was in the vicinity of the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. "Suddenly there was just - roughly ten kilometers ahead of us, and a little bit to the east of us - a bright light falling vertically down." The pilot recalled, "It appeared and disappeared four times in succession and moved differently than satellites or airplanes. After the fourth time, it suddenly shot away at an incredible speed". Since he first spoke about it publicly two years ago, numerous other pilots have approached him with similar experiences. "My colleagues have reported glowing or silver objects hovering next to the cockpit of their aircraft, sometimes flying close to the speed of sound. Others have reported groups of pulsating lights overtaking them or flying at a significant altitude and speed," says the pilot. The observations were very diverse. "They cannot be categorized into a specific description". The only thing they have in common is that pilots cannot report them. "It is important that we get rid of the stigma so that pilots and military personnel can talk about it openly without repercussions."
A question of trust
MEP Guerreiro pointed out that the EU could lose the trust of the public if it does not deal with the issue in a transparent manner. "The whole world is talking about it, the US Congress has dealt with it, but I haven't heard any debate on it in the EU," said the MEP. So far, there is no uniform, EU-wide system for reporting, monitoring and analyzing UAP sightings. The phenomenon needs to be researched in a coordinated manner and the stigma reduced. UAP should be taken into account in EU legislation in order to deal with them better.
Ten European states have already released military files on UAP, while others have yet to do so. The last time the EU Parliament dealt with the issue was in the early 1990s. Following the massive wave of UAP sightings in Belgium at the time, the EU Parliament's Committee on Energy, Research and Technology launched an investigation. It was suggested that the French state UAP research authority GEIPAN be elevated to the status of an EU authority. After an EU election, the project came to nothing and the idea vanished - but the phenomenon didn’t.
What happens now
Some of the MEPs present at the meeting also showed interest in UAP, such as José Penedo del Rio, Chief Political Affairs of the European Aviation Safety Agency in Cologne. He pointed out that there is already an EU-wide system for reporting flight safety-related incidents. It is possible that pilots will now increasingly use this little-known system to report their UAP incidents and that this will raise awareness among EU bodies that there is a real need for action. Guerreiro recently tabled a motion for a resolution to include UAP reporting.
On the whole, however, Guerreiro is standing alone in the parliament. Moreover, he isn’t running for next June’s European elections, which raises the question: what will happen to his project afterwards? Only one thing is certain: the phenomenon will continue, and sooner or later, the issue will end up back on Parliament's table.
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0