Gijon, 18/04/2011 (Agence Europe) - In response to the concerns expressed by the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR), the European Commission stressed that all European regions will be connected to the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). It said that that was the logic of the interconnection of the secondary and main TEN-T networks.
Following the current review of the TEN-T policy (final proposals on the routes are due to be brought forward around summer time), the transport routes which cross Europe will have to be articulated around a core network on which most of the public funding will be concentrated and a secondary network which will ensure better access to the core network. The network will cover all 27 member states, with the capital of each being the starting point. It will include at least one port, an airport, a rail centre and an industrial centre. “We really are taking the land mass of the member states as the starting point of the core network”, said a Commission representative, adding: “Obviously, in each of the member states, not all the regions will be covered by the core network, but all the regions will be connected to the main network by the secondary network”.
At the seminar held in Gijon, Spain, on 15 April, representatives of Europe's peripheral regions expressed their fear that the new EU transport policy might, in fact, serve only to make them more remote. They also laid great store on the development of maritime transport as the best way of helping them break out of their isolation, and called for the motorways of the sea to be viewed as services of general interest and for the setting up of a “'polycentric' European port framework”. 'The Commission is seeking to be conciliatory. It says that the connection of regions to the transport network is “absolutely essential” and will be achieved “by means of regional and national measures and through a Community framework which facilitates it”. It says, too, that the development of multi-modal corridors, as proposed in the White Paper on transport, will be of benefit throughout the whole of the EU, irrespective of geographical location. With regard to ports, it says that the TEN-T planning methodology, as adopted in Gödöllõ in February, sets the quantitative criterion and the territorial criteria which determine inclusion in the European network. “There are a number of additional ports which will be taken into the core network to make sure of opening up seaboards”, according to European officials. A CPMR study has calculated that only some 40 European ports (excluding those of Poland, Denmark, the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta) meet the quantitative criterion set by the Commission (at least 1% of all goods transported carried by sea) to be included in the TEN-T. As regards the motorways of the sea, the Commission also gave assurances that the means to open up new maritime links were, indeed, there. (O.L./transl.rt)