Brussels, 07/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - The final chapter in the call for proposals involving the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) was closed on Thursday 7 January, with the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) signing the final grant agreements for a total of €12.7 billion for transport infrastructure projects.
Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc said that this is the largest investment ever made by the EU in the transport area and pointed out that all these projects will help boost the Energy Union and Digital Agenda, with, for example, the plan to develop liquid natural gas networks and the digitalisation of transport services, given that this is one of the Commissioner's priorities.
43 of these projects are large scale initiatives and worth nearly €4.6 billion. Among the beneficiaries are flagship initiatives such as Rail Baltica, which could possibly be connected up to an underwater tunnel between Tallinn and Helsinki (see EUROPE 11462), the Brenner Base Tunnel, between Austria and Italy, the Seine-Schelde waterway, between France and the Benelux countries, the Caland Bridge in the Netherlands and the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link between Germany and Denmark.
The European Commission received no fewer than 700 calls for proposals and selected 276 of them last June (see EUROPE 11346). During the negotiations with INEA, some of the projects were merged and the budget adjusted downwards by €400 million.
A new call for proposals was launched last November, with the deadline for submissions set for 16 February 2016. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)
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