Members of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and members of the European Parliament expressed concern at the lack of financial support for small-scale transport networks during discussions at a joint meeting – the first of its kind – between the Parliament travel and tourism (TRAN) committee and the CoR committee for territorial cohesion policy (COTER) on Thursday 29 September.
Participants at the meeting drew attention to the lack of funding for local transport infrastructure which is not part of the core trans-European transport networks of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and highlighted the many missing links that remain in local networks.
Under current regulations, within the framework of the CEF, cross-border regions can submit proposals for investment to address the lack of transport connections but these projects can only be approved if they are deemed by national governments to be priorities, a source told us. National governments, however, tend to concentrate primarily on large-scale projects, involving a large number of players and having a strong political impact.
Raffaele Cattaneo, President of the Lombardia Region Council, argued that it is the small-scale infrastructure that provides “the many physical ties stitching Europe together in everyday life”. Improving local networks “requires limited funding but has a big impact on European integration”, he said.
The regions welcomed the European Commission proposal to invest €110 million from the CEF in small cross-border projects. The plan was greenlighted on 16 September by the CEF coordination committee, on which member states are represented. The call for proposals will be launched on 13 October. Not wishing to lose momentum, the members of the CoR and the MEPs called for small-scale infrastructure projects to be even more closely integrated in the new CEF 2.
Two calls for proposals, worth the equivalent of €20 billion, have already been launched under the current CEF (see EUROPE 11575 and 11492). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)