Brussels, 11/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - European Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas is ending his mandate on a high, announcing that €11.9 billion will be made available for transport infrastructure along the nine corridors of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).
On Thursday 11 September, Kallas launched the first call for projects under the new financial programming period 2014-2020. The amount at stake is vast, outstripping all previous European transport investments (€8 billion in 2007-2013).
Selection of projects. The member states will be competing with each other for their slice of the cake. The eligible projects have already been announced , as they were negotiated alongside the revision of the legislative framework of the TEN-T. There are around 100 of them along the length of the nine corridors of the central network of the TEN-T and it is only via these that the capitals may claim the European co-funding. However, they have still to get their tenders selected, and the European Commission and the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) are expected to be strict judges. The priority will go to so-called mature projects (those which can be completed by 2020) which respect safety and environmental standards, but above all, which represent European and cross-border added value. The European Commission's stated aim is to reduce bottlenecks, particularly on the borders, and improve connections between the East and West of Europe. “Project selection will be a purely mathematical exercise”, Kallas explained.
Co-funding. The call for tenders will run until 26 February 2015 - a fairly short period which promises to be complicated. The member states “will have serious work to do to complete all of the administrative procedures necessary”, said the Commissioner. The money to be made available to the selected projects will be paid in the form of co-funding and will stand at a level of between 20% and 85%. The planning projects will be 50% co-funded, cross-border projects 40%, and port projects 20%. The co-funding rises to 85% for countries which are beneficiaries of the cohesion policy.
Interconnecting Europe. The envelope of €11.9 billion is the first made available under the Interconnecting Europe Facility. This financial instrument has a budget of €26 billion for transport infrastructures between now and 2020, including €11.3 billion solely from the cohesion fund and therefore reserved for the cohesion countries. (MD)