Brussels, 27/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - An informal trialogue was reached on 27 June on the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), the financial windfall for major transport, energy and telecommunications infrastructure projects in Europe during the 2014-2020 period. At this stage, around €30 billion will go to it, depending on the final agreement obtained on the 2014-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework (as opposed to the €50 billion proposed by the Commission). Priority funding will go to projects with added European value that reduce bottlenecks and to cross-border sections.
Co-rapporteur Dominique Riquet (EPP, France) said that this was the most immediate instrument “for growth, jobs, competitiveness and European integration”. He regretted, however, that “the governments are not providing enough support to this fund, given that they are proposing to drastically reduce its financial envelope”. Co-rapporteur Adina Valean (ALDE, Romania) welcomed the “genuinely European value in tackling incomplete, inefficient or non-existent infrastructure that puts a brake on completion of the single market”.
Riquet said that the results of the institutional trialogue negotiations were “satisfactory to Parliament, which received a fair hearing, and balanced”. He emphasised that Parliament's negotiating team had fought to promote flexibility and synergies between the different sectors. He was also pleased with the alignment of the freight corridor on the Trans-European Network in Transport (TEN-T), as argued for by co-rapporteur Ines Ayala Sendes (S&D, Spain). She also appreciated the strengthening of urban nodes, as well as the setting out of a strict timetable and explained that “it will then be up to member states to present infrastructure projects in the framework set out on the basis of the outlines and priorities”. Nonetheless, she deplored the paradox whereby European delegations called for absolute rigour but, at the same time, wanted more projects during the negotiations on the annexes that included the areas eligible for funding. Valean welcomed the fact that, “so far, for energy and telecoms, there hasn't been any European money. This is completely new and it was necessary to bring these three sectors together on the same package on infrastructure”. Everyone welcomed the financial instruments, such as project bonds. The leverage effect from the CEF was also welcomed by the Irish minister for transport, Leo Varadkar, who said that the €30 billion in European funding would be used as a lever for additional private investment.
The enthusiasm of the co-rapporteurs and the Irish Presidency of the Council of Ministers, however, was not shared by the Greens, whose spokesman on transport, Michael Cramer (Germany), said that the trialogue agreement cemented an outmoded and megalomaniacal vision of transport policy and focused on extremely long and costly mega-projects that were only useful to the banking and construction sectors and that, despite the promising title, “this is not going to 'connect up Europe'”.
The trialogue agreement is due to be approved by Coreper on Thursday, then adopted by the Council and subsequently put to the vote in Parliament. (MD/transl.fl)