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The Europe-wide network has been down since Friday due to what has been termed a “technical incident related to its ground infrastructure”, the BBC reports. The issue relates to all servers, including the latest smartphone devices, not being able to pick up any useable timing or positional information. These devices must rely instead on data coming from the American Global Positioning System (GPS), which is embarrassing for the EU as they believe their system is just as reliable as the US alternative.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) issued a notification on Thursday to warn users Galileo's signals might become unreliable. At 1.50am BST on Friday an update was then sent out advising the service was out of use until further notice. The GSA said: “Experts are working to restore the situation as soon as possible. “An Anomaly Review Board has been immediately set up to analyse the exact root cause and to implement recovery actions.” READ MORE: Galileo SHOCK: EU to RISK 'safety of citizens' just to have 'leverage'

EU latest news: Galileo sat-nav system goes down in blow to EU project

EU latest Brexit news: Galileo navigation satellites are not usable 'until further notice'

Galileo is an EU project to which the UK has already contributed a significant amount financially. But the UK is not expected to be given any further involvement or access to the project post-Brexit. Theresa May told reporters at the G20 summit in Argentina last year: “The European Commission decided that we would be barred from having full aspects of the Galileo programme and so it is right for us to look for alternatives because it would be wrong to put our armed services relying on a system on which they couldn’t be sure of.” The EU touts the Galileo system as more than a mere back-up service to the US GPS system, believing it to be more accurate and robust. READ MORE: WE’LL GO IT ALONE! UK will build its OWN space defence, vows May

The cost of Galileo is expected to balloon up to three times its original estimate