Brussels, 13/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - Four of the six functional airspace blocks (FABs) submitted in response to the call for proposals of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) multiannual work programme are to receive European co-funding, an official from the European Commission told the European Parliament transport committee on 13 July. The TEN-T committee which is responsible for the programme is expected to be informed of the results of the call, launched by the Commission in February of this year, on Thursday 15 July. The Commission slightly exceeds the €20 million allowed for with its €20,477,963 funding recommendation (as opposed to an initial request in excess of €35 million). Of the four projects, FAB Europe Central (FABEC), bringing together Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland, was allocated the largest amount, €13.7 million (49.4% of the total). The northern Europe FAB (NEFAB: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Norway, Iceland and Latvia), the United Kingdom-Ireland FAB and the central European FAB (FAB CE: Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) will receive €4.09 million, €1.15 million and €1.44 million respectively (50% of the total cost of each of the blocks). The requests made by the Italian authorities (for the FAB Blue Med, bringing together Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Albania, Tunisia and Egypt) and by the Polish authorities for the FAB Baltic (Poland and Lithuania) were rejected. The selection committee said that this had been because of the lack of relevance of the proposals, the limited quality of the proposal (from the Blue Med) and the “low maturity” of the FAB Baltic. The funding allocated will facilitate the implementation of the blocks which, in line with the provisions of the second Single Sky package, should be operational by the end of 2012 in order to provide air traffic management that meets the operational needs of air navigation. (A.By./transl.rt)