30/04/2018 (Agence Europe) – On Monday 30 April, the European Commission announced that €9.6 million would be allocated from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to ensure work is completed by the end of 2019 on modernising the railway line between the Central Palermo and Notarbartolo stations, in the metropolitan area of Palermo. The project is part of the Berlin-Rome-Palermo section of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T). The aim is to transfer long distance freight transport from road to rail. European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu stressed that the investment would mean transport time is reduced in future. The TEN-T comes under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for which investment of €25 billion has been made available, the Commission said (see EUROPE 11960). Transport stakeholders nonetheless recently called for funding allocated to the CEF to be increased (see EUROPE 12010). (MS)