Brussels, 03/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - The chairman of the European Parliament committee on transport, Brian Simpson (S&D, UK), has voiced further criticism regarding Poland's plan to transfer money to road projects (see EUROPE 10360), calling on the European Commission to “make full use of the possibilities offered by the legislation and to block Poland's transfer of €1.2 billion of cohesion fund money from rail to road”, Simpson said in a letter addressed to Commissioners Johannes Hahn (regional policy) and Siim Kallas (transport) on 18 April. He went on to add that this is “a reallocation of funding which is not in line with the agreed priorities”.
Simpson nonetheless called on the Commission “to make all possible efforts to help Poland (and other cohesion countries) invest in the agreed priorities within the established deadlines”. According to Simpson, the parliamentary committee “deplores” the fact that there is “imbalance in the planned transport investments between the different modes”, above all the fact that most cohesion fund co-funding is for road transport (€41 billion compared to €23.6 billion for rail and €0.6 billion for inland navigation). Brian Simpson said that such imbalance “is detrimental” to the creation of an intermodal, sustainable transport system in Europe. Given that, as the Parliament sees it, the problem of implementing cohesion funds is not new, the chair of the transport committee underlines that conclusions should be drawn during upcoming revision of structural funds. In this context, Simpson recommends far stronger coordination between the different funds and financial instruments of the EU. He also underlines the need to introduce “proper conditionality” in the rules governing the allocation of European subsidies together with “clear sanctions” (loss of co-funding, for example) should objectives not be reached.
In January this year, Warsaw notified the Commission of its intention to allocate to road projects amounts saved during the accomplishment of rail projects subsidised by the “infrastructure and environment” programme. In particular, this included the construction of sections of trans-European transport network routes in the most sensitive areas from the security and mobility point of view. None of the rail projects declared in the context of the current financial perspectives would be penalised in this way but, on the contrary, reallocation of funding would allow Poland to accelerate upgrading of its road network. No formal request has, however, reached the Commission so far. (A.By./transl.jl)