Brussels, 08/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - After a transport partnership was launched between Africa and the EU, a new initiative for regional cooperation in this field is now taking shape, this time in the north. The eleven countries belonging to the Northern Dimension Partnership for Transport and Logistics (NDPTL) (Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Belarus and Norway) agreed on Tuesday 8 June during the TEN-T Days conference in Zaragoza, Spain (see EUROPE 10153) to set up a secretariat for the partnership.
Seven countries (Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Norway) have signed the official agreement for this. The other four (Poland, Russia, Finland and Belarus) have adopted a declaration of intent while their internal proceedings are pending, which will allow them to join the signing parties in coming months. The secretariat is due to be set up on 1 January 2011 in Helsinki within the Nordic Investment Bank which, according to the European Commission, should share its financial expertise with the members of the partnership.
Created in October 2009 after three years of negotiation (the request to examine the possibility of creating such a partnership was presented in November 2006, the decision was taken in October 2008 and made official in October 2009), the partnership held its first meeting on 8 December 2009 in Stockholm. On that occasion, Lithuania was designated to chair the steering committee during the year 2010. The countries concerned have until the end of the year to define and approve the secretariat's financing principles. They must also determine what the priority projects of their cooperation will be. In a press release, Siim Kallas, European Transport Commissioner, said the projects selected “should focus not only on physical infrastructure but a lot of improvement can take place through better coordination among transport policies, development of logistical solutions, and fostering cooperation in intelligent transport modes”. The Commission, which is not formally a part of the secretariat, has played the role of facilitator in supporting NDPTL partners to reach an agreement to allow the secretariat to be set in place.
Furthermore, on the sidelines of the conference, the transport ministers of Finland, Mikael Nyberg, Estonia, Eero Pärgmäe, Lithuania, Arûnas Ðtaras, Latvia, Aivita Lublina-Golmane, Poland, Cezary Grabarczyk, the French secretary of state for transport, Dominique Bussereau, his Spanish counterpart, José Blanco Lopoez, and the Portuguese transport minister, Antonio Mendonça, signed protocols of agreement on implementation of the priority projects of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T), through the territories of their countries. The projects in question are the Rail Baltica project linking Estonia and Poland (priority project No 27) and the high-speed rail route in south-west Europe linking France, Spain and Portugal (priority project No 3). A protocol of agreement was signed for the rail link Lyons-Trieste-Divaèa/Koper-Ljubljana-Budapest-Ukrainian border (priority project No 6). Siim Kallas and the European coordinators for these projects - Carlo Secchi for project No 3, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst for project No 6, and Pavel Telièka for Rail Baltica - jointly signed the documents that are to ensure work is coordinated between the member states.
On Wednesday 9 June, the work of the conference is expected to focus on an analysis of the document presented by the Commission in May regarding the planning method for the central TEN-T network (see EUROPE 10133). The Commission will launch a public consultation exercise on Wednesday 9 June with a view to defining the central network of the TEN-T network which should group the main towns, ports, communication hubs, airports and European freight terminals. The preliminary plan of the network should be presented in the White Paper on the future of transport due for November 2010. (A.By./transl.jl)