Brussels, 11/02/2013 (Agence Europe) - The savings in the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) have brought the response from the cabinet of Commissioner for Transport Siim Kallas that “it's not as much as we wanted, but it's more than we had”.
The CEF has taken a hit in the European Council's agreement on the multi-annual financial framework (MFF) 2014-2020 . It will receive just €29.9 billion, compared to the €50 billion initially called for by the Commission to fund the telecommunications, energy and transport infrastructures. The last of these sectors comes out the best: €23.3 billion will be allocated to the transport infrastructure, €10 billion of which will come from the cohesion fund. This is around €7 billion less than the Commission called for. Helen Kearns, the spokesperson to Commissioner Siim Kallas, stressed that this will not be enough up to the end of the decade. The Commission estimates that €5 billion will be necessary immediately to establish the European transport network, and €2.5 billion to eliminate bottlenecks. However, the CEF envelope for European transport remains a bonus, because the instrument is new and basically doubles the funding for transport under the current framework (€8 billion). “This is significant”, Kearns told EUROPE on Monday 11 February: “It is a positive thing for transport connections between east and west, and it is also positive that transport has finally been recognised as a growth factor”. (MD/transl.fl)